The Bluestocking 336: GB News and gourmandizing
“The Venetians are a thrifty people.”
Happy Friday!
Not much to report this week—because I finally filed my book draft, only sliiiightly behind my latest deadline. The fact that a fairly plausible manuscript exists gives me more confidence in saying that it should be published next summer. I am at the stage where if you want any advice on writing a book, all I have to offer is DON’T.
On this week’s Page 94 podcast, we talked about Starmer’s freebies, the end of hereditary peers in the Lords, and a trio of media ownership stories (Paul Marshall buys the Spectator, the Murdochs fight in court, and the recent resignations from the Jewish Chronicle).
Helen
Why GB News Is Angrier Than Ever (Financial Times, £).
It wasn’t a vintage night for GB News. At one stage, its graphic mixed up the exit poll and showed a victory for the Conservatives. Its election night audience totalled just 584,000, one-ninth that of Sky News and less than one-third of Channel 4’s. BBC One, meanwhile, reached 11.2 million.
The following morning I returned to the office to see how GB News was adjusting to life after the Tories. “Do you live here now? Are you and him going out?” asked Mick Booker, another former Daily Express journalist who, as editorial director, is Frangopoulos’s second-in-command. Frangopoulos was chipper. Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson and Richard Tice — all GB News presenters — had been elected as Reform members of parliament. “The story is there’s a new political party that’s come from nowhere, and three of the four MPs are GB News presenters.” Reform later won a fifth MP, although the other news channels decided the bigger story was Labour entering government.
In its early days, GB News wooed Tory politicians: it paid more than £660,000 in appearance fees and salaries to Conservative MPs, and just £1,100 to Labour MPs, according to analysis by The Guardian. One of those Tory MPs was [Lee] Anderson, who earns £100,000 a year from GB News, and defected to Reform. GB News’s centre of gravity shifted too. The afternoon and primetime schedule is now presented entirely by allies of Farage or of his previous parties.
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Henry Mance has a behind-the-scenes look at GB News, which is both very influential with Tory members and losing a lot of money. The ownership of British media outlets is a big subject at the moment, and it’ll be interesting to see if the backers of GB News think that having a Reform-sympathetic television channel is worth millions in losses.
PS. The FT is paywalled, but try googling the headline and you can probably bypass that because they do give out free clicks.
PPS. I particularly enjoyed this piece because I confidently predicted that GB News would end up as “Fox News with a British accent” back in 2021, when everyone involved was denying it.
Quick Links
“White-guy-goes-a-wandering, white-guy-goes-a-gourmandizing—that’s the rubric. […] Nice work if you can get it. And the genre has been formalized: drone shots of fjords, mesas, and Mumbai street markets; glistening porno food close-ups; tinkly twinkly music; voice-overs saying things like “The Venetians are a thrifty people.” James Parker on all those TV travelogue (eatalogue?) shows featuring late-career men eating antipasti (The Atlantic, gift link).
“Generally, permission comes up in a group chat. Someone might ask, “Can I be a bitch for a second?” (the answer is always “yes”).” A dozen writers reflect on the group chat (LARB).
This week, I wrote about the first women we know about who died as a result of the restrictions in abortion ushered in by the fall of Roe v Wade (The Atlantic).
“On a table were a series of Morph-like creatures, the product of an earlier round. “Ed Clay-veys,” someone explained. One of them had tiny yellow genitalia. “ Jonn Elledge reports on the newly chipper Liberal Democrats (Substack).
“I was never censored. Then came the Hamas attack on October 7th which completely traumatised the Jewish community here in Britain. Feeling under assault the community, it seemed to me, withdrew further and further into its shell.” David Aaronovitch was one of four columnists to leave the Jewish Chronicle over its decision to print dodgy pro-Netanyahu stories by a contributor with a whiffy CV. Here he explains how the paper has changed (Substack).
Emily Wilson on why her ancient Greek translations describe Odysseus as “complicated” (Substack).
I enjoyed Yascha Mounk’s (partial) defence of effective altruism, which kicks off with a great apocryphal story about a toaster (Persuasion, Substack).
“I am willing to fight a champion put up by the DVLA if they want to accept my challenge – but they must remember it is a fight to the death.” Thanks to excellent Substacker Brian Klaas for the link to this Ipswich Star article about a man who demanded trial by combat after being done for not paying the vehicle tax on his motorbike.
“Tokugawa put Japan first, too, driving out foreign influences and sealing the borders. (He didn’t need to build a wall, as the oceans did that for him.) This may have made his position stronger in the short term, but it would prove corrosive for Japan, and his Shogunate, over the long term. When the Americans showed up in their gunboats almost two and a half centuries later in 1853, collective shock at how far behind Japan had fallen in comparison to the West played a key role in the Tokugawa reign finally crumbling.” Now that I have filed the book draft, I plan to binge-watch Shogun this weekend. Here’s Japan-based blogger Matt Alt on how Hollywood finally got Nippon right (Substack).
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Without a doubt the best part about writing a book is finishing writing the book.
Some speculation is perhaps par for the course re the tragic case of Amber Nicole Thurman - since as far as I know only ProPublica has seen the mortality review (unless you have Helen, in which case I apologise). We don't know for sure if the doctors delayed her D&C due to fear of a lawsuit. I also wonder if the abortion clinic should have given her pills if they knew she was pregnant with twins (are abortion pills generally ok for twins? how does that affect the dosage? is the 5 percent of cases requiring a D&C generally multiple fetuses? Did they properly explain to her the risks?).
Clearly, if Amber had been able to access an abortion more easily, her tragic death would not have occurred. But I think it might be necessarily to place some of the blame onto mis/disinformation (that Georgia bans D&Cs; that abortion pills are ALWAYS safe) as well.
I'm speaking as someone who is very pro-life and anti-abortion bans, and has also had a life-saving D&C (after a miscarriage) - Amber's case is heartbreaking and I can only imagine how her family are feeling about her preventable death.