Quintin Jardine's blog

One day up and Bob Skinner now has 18 Facebook friends, or so he tells me. He’s a competitive guy, so he’s after as many as he can get. Enter name, then location Gullane, and the profile picture will tell you you have the right man.

Don’t be ashamed. Be proud you’ve caught up so quickly. Father’s Day, eh? It’s no coincidence Bob’s annual appearance is around that time.

Depends how far you’ve got so far, Wee Jean. If you’re up to Grievous Angel, then you will have 11 months to wait for the next Skinner, but you can ask him yourself on his Facebook page.

Just done something zany. I’ve set up a Facebook account for Bob Skinner (but don’t tell them or I suspect they’ll delete it). When Andy Martin asks to be his friend, then I’ll get worried.

Haven’t heard from AJ today. Until I do I can harbour the notion that he might be the mystery Brit who has scooped £162m on Euromillions. But no, not even I could make that one up.

One might think that News International would know when to regroup, but no. Under attack on several fronts by the last Prime Minister, the Sun chose today to lead with a defence of its publication of a story about the medical condition of Mr and Mrs Brown’s younger son. They deny that it was obtained by illegal means and that it was brought to them by a ‘member of the public’, and go on to set out chapter and verse of the exchange with Brown’s office that followed. Give up people, you’re the bloody Sun, and we all know that nothing you do is about morality, but is for one end alone, namely the lining of the pockets of Rupert Murdoch, presumably so that he can continue to pay for the services of the blonde personal trainer who seems to have been at his side from the moment he arrived in London. It’s as simple as this; you’ve shattered the right of an infant to medical confidentiality. You’ve put the poor kid in a goldfish bowl, and it’s no use saying that the Browns approved the story, if they did, because we all know you’d have run it anyway.

If it’s any consolation, such are the preferences of the average Sun reader that the Brown story ranks only Number 5 on today’s most-read online stories, behind, in order, a £162m lottery winner, a potential football transfer, a picture special about the girlfriend of another footballer, and a piece under  the headline ‘Hermione Granger and the Chamber of Pole Dancers’, which claims that the Harry Potter actress Emma Watson went partying after the New York premiere of the last movie in a club where there were poles for dancing on, but didn’t actually mount one herself. Classy, yes?

Around an hour ago, 70% humidity turned to 100%. We decided to go shopping, and got in the car. Unfortunately so did everyone else in L’Escala. Took us a long time to go nowhere. By that time humidity was down to a mere 73%. Once home I decided to take Mia for a walk in the pram, to kid her into going to sleep. She fell for the trick, but the sweat is still pouring out of me.

It’s cloudy today. After a month in the mid to high eighties that should bring a little relief, but no; instead it brings 70% humidity. It’s a tough life on the Costa Brava.

No, it isn’t a set-up for anything, it’s a one-off (maybe) look into Skinner’s past. You have a point about the RCN, and I take it, but I have to point out to you that the book is set in 1996, and that the NMC wasn’t established until 2002. NLaS.

A long time back, I deleted all the games from my computer, but I can’t touch my iTunes library, and  that’s an even stronger barrier between me and the day job. Now for example, when Primavera is screaming for attention, I find myself listening to the mighty Neil Young, at his absolute peak on all eight minutes and twenty-one seconds of Like A Hurricane. And I know that next I’ll move on to seven minutes and thirty-two seconds of Cortes the Killer. I like guitars, see, and these are two of the best such tracks ever laid down. What the hell, it’s nearly lunchtime anyway.

I am an admirer of David Beckham. He’s an all-round class act, a great ambassador for his country and a model father. But even I must question his choice of middle name for his daughter. Seven? It can only be after the number he wore as captain of England, the number he inherited from Eric Cantona at Man U, then passed on to Cristiano Ronaldo. But then he moved to Madrid and on to LA Galaxy. I can only wonder; if he and Victoria have another daughter will she be named Twenty-three?

Thanks, Amit. Please recommend it to as many peers as you can find. I’m glad it brightened your week.

Relax. You haven’t missed a book. Inhuman Remains is where the Primavera series starts. Next, Blood Red, to be followed in January by As Easy as Murder, and a year later by something else, as yet untitled.

First time, but I hope it won’t be the  last. I look forward to hearing from you again.

Amidst all the NoW rumpus, it occurs to me there’s a point that is being completely overlooked.

If it’s that easy to hack into our phones and manipulate voice mail,  shouldn’t our telecommunications providers be apologising every bit as loudly as James Murdoch, (I don’t think his dad ever apologised for anything in his sinister old life) and taking equally vigorous and public action to get their houses in order?

I read a strange piece today in the Sunday Herald to which I subscribe on line, by one Paul Hutcheon. It’s an earnest essay, well motivated I’m sure, in which Mr Hutcheon condemns the phone-hacking activities of the News of the World, yet applauds the ‘technical transgression’ (many people would call it theft) that led  to the Telegraph’s lauded parliamentary expenses expose, and seems to suggest that if journalists had hacked into the phones of Richard Nixon and his cronies they would have been seen as heroes. If he really believes that, he’s making the case for greater media accountability, not opposing it.

However that’s by-the-by. At the beginning of his essay, Mr Hutcheon refers to a friend whose constant railing against the media makes him want to hit the chap. Funny, isn’t it, that a man can rant about freedom of speech and expression, yet feel violent to those who exercise it. Well, get this Paul. Early in your piece there is a reference to press officers. After beginning my professional life as a working  journalist, I was one of those. I did my job honourably, honestly and in all that time I never, no,  rarely said a word that I knew to be an untruth, the only exceptions being when I worked in politics and declared that my by-election candidate was going to win when I knew that he was as fit for purpose as a chocolate tea-pot and had as much chance of survival when put to the test. The great majority of my colleagues were as conscientious as I tried to be, and remained calm even in the face of the occasional abuse which came our way from Mr Hutcheon’s equivalents of that era. Thinking journalists recognise that press officers are there to help them not to obstruct them, but many, too many, are antipathetic. I know this and I lived with it for all the time I was in that profession. But when I read a journalist describing my successors as ‘snakelike’, well, I’m not having that. Mr Hutcheon sometimes feels like hitting his pal? In that case he’ll understand how I’m feeling now. As well we’re in different countries, for I might not be as restrained as him.

A standalone featuring him? Now that is an interesting idea, and one that hadn’t occurred to me. Thanks for that and everything else.

In conversation with my daughter the other day, she asked me what I thought of the News of the World scandal. It didn’t take me long to come up with an answer. I told her that it made me think of a great ship captured by pirates.

When I was a young man, enjoying my time in local journalism alongside real reporters like David Bell, John McCalman, Isobel Craigie and Tom ‘The Judge’ Christie, the NoW was a mighty organ. Yes, it was the News of the Screws even then, but it was a powerful broadsheet with class and elan, and it was a popular stop on the career ladder. Not only that, it was, or had been, the biggest selling newspaper in the world, with a peak weekly sale of over 8.4m copies. It started flying under the Jolly Roger in 1968, when Rupert Murdoch won control from Robert Maxwell. Maybe the lesser of two evils, but an evil nonetheless. From that point on, it diminished; the stuff we’re hearing about now wasn’t the beginning of its moral bankruptcy. For example, yesterday I heard Brian May, of Queen, claim that its people tried to take photographs through Freddy Mercury’s toilet window when he was approaching his AIDS-related death.  For me its death-knell began to sound in 1984 when it became a tabloid. The last bell will ring on Sunday and that will be that.

Damn few people will be sorry to see it go in its present form, yet the manner of its passing wrankles with me. The ship hasn’t been sunk, it’s been scuttled. The rats are in the lifeboat and the crew have been left to drown. There was an immediate alternative to its closure, one that would have probably been enough to keep the advertisers on board and allow its rehabilitation. It is astonishing to me, and as far as I can see to every person outside the News International boardroom and perhaps the Brooks household, that the person who was at the helm at the beginning of the final phase of impropriety and who is currently group CEO, can remain in post. Rebekah will stay, but Colin Myler, the highly respected editor and his staff, the majority of whom are newcomers and were not involved in the scandals, will be unemployed on Monday.

This has given rise to innumerable sideshows. The ‘arrest’ of Andy Coulson, for one. (A necessary legal formality leaked by the police. Why? Good question.) His summary trial and conviction for unstated crimes by the likes of Nick Robinson and Robert Peston of the BBC, which is doing all it can to undermine the proposed 100% acquisition of BSkyB by NewsCorp. Robinson and other self-interested journalists, pillorying Dave Cameron for employing Coulson, when that actually has nothing to do with teh central issues involved. The creepy Ed Millipede jumping on the bandwagon, when the predecessors he served slavishly were so far up the Murdochs they could barely pop out for air. The Metropolitan Police being allowed to investigate itself following allegations of bribery by the News of the World.

This is all beyond fiction. I doubt if J K Rowling, or even Sir Terry Pratchett could have made up this lot up.

I have never taken a recreational drug, other than alcohol, at any time in my life. That said, I’m a member of a minority group of believers that such substances should be decriminalised. We live in an era where human rights are valued and protected by international agreements, yet our society continues to pass an enforce laws determining what individuals may or may not inject, inhale or ingest. If these were set aside, and all drugs were treated as are tobacco and alcohol, i. e. legitimised and taxed, the revenues they would generate, and the vast amounts that are currently spent on the pursuit, prosecution and punishment of users and suppliers would be saved to be used for the betterment of society. This might include health education on the dangers of abuse of these products, and if so, fair enough.

However there is one area of drug abuse where the issues are less clear cut, and that is in professional sport. I came across an interesting blog on the BBC website this morning. Worth a read.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tomfordyce/2011/07/inside_the_anti-doping_system_3.html