Quintinjardine's Blog

That must keep you very busy. May God light up your day.

I started as a Luddite, then I became a Kindle convert, now I’m a Luddite again. Kindle has everything going for it. The device is light, it’s a library in your pocket, and it offers a new reading experience, for ageing eyes in particular. On top of that it has built in a new and massively impressive shopping facility . . . and that’s why it’s very dangerous.

I’m a book-man, all round. I write them, I’m a reader, and to an extent I’m a collector. I like and admire booksellers. I’ve been in book stores in eight countries and four continents, and they all have one thing in common. People work there for love, not money.

The returns for independent proprietors have never been brilliant, and in recent years they’ve come under even heavier pressure, from the fall-out from discounting wars between major book chains and supermarkets, and also from the ubiquitous, pervasive and all too often wholly irresponsible charity shops that are blooming like mushrooms, particularly in Britain.

As for the big book players, shop floor wages are notoriously low, while management expectation can be unreasonably high, especially where re-stocking, display, and the number of tea-bags allowed in the staff-room is tightly controlled from the centre. Yet sensible adults choose to work there, from a sense of pure vocation. They all deserve our support. The last thing either sector needs is for e-readers to take off; that would push many over the edge.

Obviously, I don’t disapprove of internet trading, per se. For some, for example, the house-bound and the geographically disadvantaged, they’re a Godsend. Also, I’d rather people bought books from Amazon than Tesco. But I will always want them to be able go to Simon Kesley, in Haddington, to Sleuths, and Ben McNally, in Toronto, to the new Edinburgh Book Shop in Bruntsfield, to Mysterious Books in New York, and to hundreds like them around the English Speaking world. (Other tongues can fight their own battles.) God help me I’ll even always want them to go to Waterstone, Barnes & Noble and Chapters-Indigo.

I fear for their future, for all of them, in the face of the new Kindle onslaught; for be aware, Kindle is a software based device and that software is available for free download and use on PC, Mac, lap-top, tablet and even iPhone. (Now I’ve told you that I’ll have to kill you.) The threat is real, and traditional booksellers have few defences; only two that I can see.

One, there will always be people like me, who believe that to ripple the pages of a printed book is a special experience, one that through the centuries has taken millions from the darkness into the light.

Two? You can’t have your Kindle signed by the author.

Just watched Panorama and I’m spitting feathers. While I don’t condone the abuse of prisoners, or of any human beings, neither do I find acceptable a half-hour stream of unsubstantiated allegations and insinuations against the British military, by its own public service tax-payer funded broadcaster. This wasn’t even as ignoble as trial by television: it was kangaroo court, courtesy of the public purse. This programme has been run by subversives for the last 30 years; they’re still getting away with it, and it’s time they were stopped.

Here’s a nice football story, about an honest mistake dealt with sensibly.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/scot_prem/9037802.stm

Well done both managers, especially Derek McInnes. How many would have reacted as he did?

Back to normal this morning though. The Golden Family are off on Mia’s first official holiday, and we’re looking after the dogs. If I could, I’d have set them on Yvette Cooper Balls an hour ago, when I saw her on telly, insincerity oozing from every pore as she attempted to praise the new Dear Leader without choking on her words, and on both rejoicing Kinnocks, enriched by Europe and ennobled beyond their worth. One seat on an Edinburgh tram would be one too many for that couple, never mind two in the House of Lords.

Lovely Sunday yesterday. Our two closest friends came for lunch, and the Spanish family, with the lovely Mia as the centre of attraction . . . as you are when you’re three months old. Made me forget all about the relentless soap opera that is British politics, and even ignore Man U’s failure to take advantage of the short-comings of their main rivals. It’s good to be reminded of the things that are truly important in life.

Okay, two days off, now back to work. Big edit looming on Primavera 3, polishing, improving, expanding where necessary and locating and removing dead chauffeurs. Once that’s done, I’ll . . . take another couple of days off.

What’s that you say? ‘…creepy Ed Miliband, … has the look of a perverted vampire’ Perhaps that is taking it a little far. There is no reason to assert that Ed is perverted in any way, Mary. His party is, yes, in electing him to lead it after he wrote its last, disastrous, manifesto, but that needn’t apply to him. Creepy? Again, no evidence, although his apparent lack of commitment to the family unit, as witness his readiness to shaft his older brother, and some other stuff that’s in the Telegraph this morning might strike some people as having a little of the weasel in it. Vampire? We won’t really know that until he smiles properly.

Six matches gone, Motherwell have won all their away games and none at home. Funny how, every time Hearts lose at Tynecastle it’s always the referee’s fault.

The bookies got it right, then. Too bad for the Labour Party that it’s got it wrong; it’s now led by someone who wasn’t the first choice of either the Parliamentary party or the membership at large.