SPECTATOR'S NOTE BOOK
J. \\T M.
THOMPSON
If a policeman or some other more shadowy official investigator chooses to tap my tele- phone, he has to obtain, the permission of the Home Secretary before doing so. This, at least, is an accepted principle. But if some bright boy at the BBC decides he would like to eaves- drop, by means of a hidden microphone, on any private conversation I may be having, does he have to seek permission at the same high level? Not at all, according to Sir Hugh Greene's astonishing pronouncement on the subject. He doesn't even need the approval of the director-general of the BBC, but merely the permission (according to Sir Hugh) of someone 'very near the top in the BBC immediately below myself.' Dutifully impressed as I am by this glimpse of the Corporation's vertiginous heights, I am not at all impressed by what Sir Hugh evidently intended to be a form of reassurance to the public. Tapping telephones, after all, is supposed to be carried out only for purposes of law enforcement or in the in- terests of national security (even if it so happens that everyone seems to believe there is a dirtier side to the business nowadays). But bugging private conversations for the BBC has an altogether different status: it is simply a form of news-gathering or even entertain- ment, and the use of vague phrases like 'in the public interest' cannot make it other than a poisonous technique in either category. The only healthy course is for the BBC to forswear it for ever, sacrificing the hypothetical gain in some just-imaginable future case for the positive benefit of giving a check now to this growing and hateful business of electronic prying. MPs make plenty of fatuous com- plaints about radio and television here is an occasion for really worthwhile pres- sure.
All fall down?
I regretted the relatively modest news value accorded to the disclosure that York Minster has become so dilapidated that it might fall down before long. What uproar there would. be it it were suddenly discovered that even one precious picture in the National Gallery were in a similar ruinous state! I have read somewhere that when York sur- rendered to the parliamentarians after the battle of Marston Moor, the citizens stipulated that the stained glass of the Minster should be spared from the ideological window-smashing which Cromwell's men liked to practise. It is hard to imagine a cathedral being rated so highly now. If enough private money cannot be found to save the cathedral, public money ought to bridge the gap, as is done when a great painting is in danger of being lost to the nation. It would be good business in any case: ruined, York Minster would presumably pass to the Ministry of Works, and would then cost them a pretty sum to preserve in pic- turesque decay.
News business
'The business of the USA,' Coolidge remarked in a famous moment of perception, 'is business.' It occurred to me, as The Times was delivered of its firstborn Business News offspring right on my lap on Tuesday, that this might now be amended to read, 'The business of Fleet Street is business news.' The whole pack are now agog to chronicle the doings of tycoons and wouldbe tycoons; the Daily Telegraph has resorted to some weird typography to embellish its efforts; even the Guardian is joining in, (though one suspects that in this field our Mancunian friends suffer from a fundamental lack of a market, ever since they ceased to be able to splash the price of cotton three or four times a week). This journalistic obsession has been creeping up caw: for years the pape.ra have been giving increasing space to takeover armageddons and daring peeps behind the scenes in a jam factory: and rather curiously, it has reached its peak after three years of Wilsonian socialism. The cheerful dissection of millionaires was estab- lished decades ago- as part of the Beaverbrook formula for popular journalism, other people's money being ranked close to other people's sex lives in entertainment value. What I find off- putting about the new wave of heavyweight business newsmongering is the hint of owlish pomposity that clings to it—exemplified in that egregious piece of self-advertisement masquera- ding as the Times first leader on Tuesday. Will Lord Thomson's men please drop this habit of printing breathless communiqués every time they take a top-level decision, to shift the tele- vision programmes to another page?
Autumn crokers
Saffron is a delectable, flavouring. which I first learned to enjoy when eating certain unfor- gettable Mediterranean fish dishes. My liking for it. survived the subsequent discovery that it is not cheap, and currently sells in this country at around. thirty-two shillings= an ounce. Last week,. on a holiday journey in. rural Essex, I found Myself in. the pleasing. town at Saffron Walden, and, what's more, in a decidedly with-it shop catering for the fashionable do- it-yourself haute cuisine. I asked: for saffron, and they hadn't any. Exotic herbs in plenty, but none of the delicious ingredient which the town advertises in its' name. However, my idle inquiry gained for me the knowledge that saffron used to be grown in England, and that indeed. Saffron Walden was so named for its pre-eminence in. this laudable- activity.
I am now wondering how its cultivation came to die out One would think any crop commanding such a price would tempt horti- culturalists. Failing a better explanation, my best guess is that it must be an irritatingly tedious crop to harvest. The stuff used by cooks is in fact a small part of the flOwer of an autumn crocus. The tiny stigmas have to be picked out by hand, and, to make matters worse, only in the early morning. No wonder the Essex cultivators were known as 'crokers.' We now import it from Spain. Yet the streets of Rome were strewn with saffron when Nero entered the city: at thirty-two shillings an ounce, that sounds very nearly the most prodi- gal thing I have ever heard about Nero.
Tripotfaf
The main effect of the Budget upon the man in the street seems to be that henceforth he will have a marginally greater chance of being knocked down by a motor cycle. We must hope the Chancellor's ton-up boys remain 'steady on course.' Meanwhile, for un- ashamedly sentimental reasons I am impelled to express pleasure that he has also' smiled upon the three-wheeled can I have a fetidness for this improbable-looking kind of vehicle because the first car I ever owned' was an ancient Mor- gan (vintage 1932, 1 think) with two wheels at the front and meat- the back. It was an absurd form of transport for which I developed a strong youthful affection. The engine—air- cooled, and rather startlingly powerful when it was in a good mood—projected nakedly in front like that of a First World War aeroplane. Extravagantly curving exhaust pipes ran from bows to stern and grew disturbin-gly hot in action. There was a minute windscreen, re- sembling a pair- of angular spectacles, but there was no' side protection, so passengers were frozen in winter. I once travelled the length of the Great North Road with a girl whee insisted upon- calling at the better hotels en route to have a but-water bottle refilled. I still see a few such relics of the heroic days of motoring on the road. At least mine worked (except once when it vanished squid-like in a cloud of blue smoke in Sloane Street) and that's more tfran am' prepared to believe of Mrs Castle's Infest nostrum of miniature driverless taxis on train- lines.
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