Ertblog

Postman's Park: the City of London's tribute to long-ago heroes

The City of London is famous - infamous - for greed. Yet a quiet corner of the City pays handsome tribute to ordinary people who gave their lives to save others.

Postman's Park is a small garden where postmen from the nearby General Post Office could take a break from their shifts. But it has a surprise in store. Back in 1887, George Watts decided to mark Queen Victoria's golden jubilee by commemorating ordinary people who had sacrificed their lives saving others. He created a heroes' gallery in the grounds of St Botolph's church in Little Britain, seen above: Postman's Park. The wall contains dozens of tablets, telling briefly individual stories of heroic sacrifice.

I discovered this moving tribute to forgotten heroes five years ago. I walked past it again yesterday, wondering once more about the tragedies it commemorates.

Take this story:

Silvertown explosion? A quick Google search shows that a munitions factory blew up in January 1917, killing 73 people in east London. PC Brown lost his life saving others in the disaster.

Here is another tribute, this time to a boy who died rescuing a friend:

Heroes who deserve eternal recognition. What a contrast to appalling, greedy people like Fred Goodwin of Royal Bank of Scotland whose greed and arrogance destroyed the nation's financial system. David Selves and Edward Brown, we salute you all these years later.

Wild horse Friday

What drama!

I had arranged to meet our friends Andy and Sarah for a drink in Seer Green, Bucks this evening. I set off on my Brompton folding bike, and was cursing my weak bike lights when I saw two horses turning onto the country lane, alone.

I threw the bike to the ground and called my friend Deborah, who rides in the stables just up the road. She alerted the owner of the stables. Meanwhile, I met Andy and Sarah, who put my Brompton in the back of their car, and we set off in pursuit of the horses. They had set off down Twitchells Lane towards Jordans, where some men had tried to catch them. They alluded us all, heading back up the lane. Finally we managed to get them, just as the police arrived on the scene.

The horses are now in a paddock, awaiting daylight and identification. We retired to the pub, happy that the story had a happy ending.

BBC's chief destroys the case not to show DEC's Gaza appeal

Humiliating your boss is rarely a good career move. But John Humphrys won't mind. The BBC Today programme's star presenter left the corporation's director-general, Mark Thompson, floundering this morning as he questioned his ultimate boss on the BBC's decision not to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee's appeal video to help the victims of the Gaza conflict.

Thompson's hapless performance exposed the emptiness of the BBC's explanation: that showing the appeal would endanger the BBC's reputation for impartiality. He conceded Humphrys' point that viewers could distinguish between a humanitarian appeal and taking sides in a conflict. He accepted that DEC's appeal was not politically motivated. He kept repeating the words 'complex', 'impartiality' and 'sensitive' as if they themselves explained or justified his stance.

Thompson cited the corporation's decision not to air the Make Poverty History campaign video as a precedent. Yet the two cases are entirely different. Make Poverty History was a political campaign, however worthy its aims. It wanted to change government policy. DEC's Gaza appeal is about helping relieve human suffering. It isn't interested in the rights and wrongs of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Thompson would have been on more solid ground had he said the BBC would not air appeals about current conflicts, rather than natural disasters. But he did not. As Humphrys said, the BBC showed DEC's Darfur appeal, which was just as sensitive by Thompson's argument.

Impartiality is a noble cause, and one the BBC rightly defends, not just because its charter requires it. In a world dominated by propaganda and polemic, I cherish the BBC's approach, as I blogged in this post in 2007 when the Guardian's Emily Bell questioned the corporation's impartiality. But on Gaza, the BBC has made a bad mistake. It feared being attacked for broadcasting the appeal. But as Thompson conceded, viewers are capable of distinguishing between a humanitarian appeal and political propaganda. The BBC should have had the confidence to show the appeal and dismiss the inevitable criticisms from lobbyists who themselves are far from impartial. 

PS: Jonathan Calder in his Liberal England blog questioned whether the BBC was quite as impartial on Make Poverty History as Mark Thompson claimed on Today.

Don't shoot the messenger: the banks protest too much

I was amazed by PR Week's lead story today: 'Banking industry lashes out at negative media coverage'.

It quotes the British Bankers' Association's comms director Lesley McLeod criticising many journalists for not understanding the issues.

In my time as a PR manager in the banking industry, I worked with Lesley from time to time and regarded her as a professional spokesperson for the industry. I don't underestimate the huge challenge facing the BBA, and think chief executive Angela Knight has raised the association's game since joining two years ago.

But PR Week's article reflects badly on the banks. While I know how tough it is explaining complex issues to general reporters, the huge irony is that the banks themselves failed to understand their own activities, leading to the sorry state we all find ourselves in. The industry is in no position to lecture the media on a lack of understanding. And although I have criticised commentators like Robert Peston for revelling in gloom, it's hard to imagine how banking PR professionals could take issue with negative reporting of the sector given the daily stream of disastrous developments at many of our top banks. To paraphrase Clement Attlee, a period of silence (rather than protest) would be most welcome.

"Please don't": Today's Evan Davies tries to keep Gordon Brown under control

I can't say I rush to watch or listen to Gordon Brown being interviewed. Britain's prime minister tries to win a debate by boring the interviewer, never mind the audience. Great slabs of dull dialogue, delivered in a monotone voice, don't make great listening at breakfast time.

So I only listened to part of his 17 minute interview with Evan Davies on Radio 4's Today programme this morning. Davies valiantly tried to keep the interview on track, pleading "please don't" when Brown was about to repeat a long, long answer about the Government's bank rescue.

But the really interesting bit was when Brown insisted that his oft-repeated claim to have ended economic boom and bust hadn't proved mistaken. Not a bit of it: this recession is a global crisis, said Brown. So that's all right then. I'm sure the tens of thousands who have lost their jobs this winter will feel a lot better that the prime minister thinks that the boom and bust cycle remains vanquished despite the fact we're now in recession.

Why do politicians insist on these rhetorical games? Who do they think they're kidding? I still think Labour deserves some credit for the longest period of economic growth for decades, but the Government wins no friends for insisting that black is white.

Green shoots and unanswered questions: Labour's ministers wilt under media fire

Few voters had heard of Baroness Vadera until the low profile government minister yesterday repeated Norman Lamont's 1991 gaffe of claiming to spot green shoots of economic recovery, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary - thousands of job losses the very day she was interviewed by ITV.

It's difficult to believe that Vadera was unaware of the huge embarrassment Lamont's comments caused John Major's government at the height of the last recession. Yet she fell into the trap ITV's interviewer set for her. 

Listening to BBC Radio 5 Live's Drive show covering the story at great length made me think the subject didn't deserve that much attention. For I was much more irritated by business secretary Peter Mandelson's total failure to answer two key questions in his interview with Radio 4's Today programme earlier the same day.

Interviewer Sarah Montague asked Mandelson why the government couldn't just tell partly state-owned banks like RBS to lend more to hard pressed small businesses, rather than spend yet more taxpayers' money on a loan scheme. Mandelson ploughed on with his own lengthy monologue rather than offer an answer. Montague was equally ineffective in allowing the minister to duck her query of his claim that each taxpayer will be £270 a year better off because of the Government's one year cut in the VAT rate. It's difficult to imagine John Humphrys allowing a politician to get away with that old trick. But as a voter, my view of slippery Mandelson slipped further.

PS: don't get the idea I felt sorry for Vadera as she was humiliated. This, after all, was the woman who pushed through the disastrous part privatisation of the London Underground.

Whatever happened to Bedside Guardian 2008?

Every year, Britain's Guardian newspaper publishes a collection of its best articles from the previous 12 months. The collection has carried the title of Bedside Guardian for most of its near 60 year history.

The 2008 edition, published in November, seems set to be the last of the line. The paper has completely failed to promote it, and it is unavailable, even from the Guardian's own bookshop. It would be sad if this venerable glimpse of each year's news and features has passed into history.    

UPDATE, 28 January 2009: I finally found a copy yesterday at Borders bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London. If you're looking for a copy, it might be worth trying there as they had half a dozen copies.

Farewell to Norwich Union, Bristol & West, Woolworths, MFI...

Britain has seen the end of a number of famous names this winter, as the credit crunch and golobalisation have taken their toll.

Aviva, a company that sounds like a bus company and a 1970s car, finally announced that it was axing its Norwich Union brand. Aviva regarded NU as parochial and unsuited for a global stage compared with its own brand name, which was dreamed up by a committee some eight years ago. A venerable name follows Midland Bank, Eagle Star and Leeds Permanent Building Society into oblivion. And Bristol & West, another former building society that survived as a shadow of its former glory under Bank of Ireland, until its fate was revealed this week.

Does it matter? No, at least when compared with the agonies of life and death played out in the ruins of Gaza. But life is diminished slightly when a century or more of endeavour is obliterated, often for questionable benefit and empire building.

Many will remember with affection famous names from the past, decades after they died. Take the chemists, Timothy White's. As a child, I loved ringing the doorbells on display in the store, which was bought and renamed by its big rival, Boots. And I enjoyed the fishy aroma of MacFisheries, a fishmongers chain that spread across the country, and the cheesy whiff of David Greig's. All gone, but not forgotten.

I have a closer connection with one lost name: Eagle Star. The old life and general insurance company traced its roots back to the Eagle insurance company of 1807. In the first half of the twentieth century, Eagle Star was a pioneering, even buccaneering company. It invented the modern idea of home insurance, with one policy covering fire, storm and other damage. But it later fell into complacent middle age, and was eventually bought by British American Tobacco, of all companies. In time, BAT decided to stick to tobacco, and Eagle Star was sold to the Swiss insurance group, Zurich. Within a decade, the name was history.

Companies no longer treat their employees as anything other than an asset to be disposed of as they see fit. So it is, perhaps, surprising that the passing of a company's name such as Woolworth is marked with sadness. Or are we mourning the passing of a reminder of a lost age when companies and their staff shared a mutual loyalty and respect?

What's going on at Typepad?

Ertblog enjoyed its third birthday on New Year's Day. It was a modest celebration, reflecting my infrequent posts since our son Owen was born last July.

I've kicked off 2009 with a few posts, only to find Typepad has become painfully slow since my last visit. It takes an age to write anything, especially if you move the curser back to edit or delete text. What's going on?

Robert Peston's 'we're doomed' hysteria is getting tiresome

BBC business editor Robert Peston has become famous for breaking big stories about the credit crunch - and infamous for revelling in bad news.  

His Peston's Picks blogpost today about Marks & Spencer's trading update was a classic:

"Here's the ghastly bit: overall UK sales were down 3.4%..."

 He described M&S's story as "pretty dire". 

I'd say that a fall in sales of under 10% was pretty impressive in the current economic climate. Car makers would love that kind of resilience. We're all cutting back, just in case things get serious, so sales are bound to fall. We should therefore be sanguine when companies fail to report the kind of bumper results and profits of recent years.

That's not to say Preston is always wrong. A year ago, I defended his scoop about Northern Rock's rescue. That story was totally justified, and reflected the bank's disastrous management failure, rather than causing its demise. But as the credit crunch has turned into recession, Peston's rush to comment has become his weakness. The BBC may be happy with Peston's Stakhanovite productivity, but the rest of us question his 'we're doomed' approach. Peston's bosses should tell him to restrain his glee.

DISCLOSURE: I am a former head of PR for M&S Money, though I was never an M&S employee.