Chris Whiteside's Blog

When the history of newspapers in Britain is written, Eddie Shah deserves to be remembered as the man who started a revolution in the industry by freeing the press from the print unions and introducing new computer-based technology to the nationals. His actions were hugely controversial at the time, but after his death in late December 2025, even The Guardian could write of him in their obituary published yesterday,  " Shah sparked the changes that broke the unions’ power and allowed the introduction of new printing methods, exploited first by Rupert Murdoch and subsequently by every other national newspaper group including the Guardian. From the grey and inky pages and grainy black-and-white photographs of the 1970s and early 80s, the newspapers burst into colour reproduction, more innovative designs and speedier and uninterrupted print and circulation runs. " They quoted Eddie Shah himself as saying “ It wasn’t a failure because our innovations benefited the rest of the ind...

 “I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.” — Benjamin Disraeli

 

 

This was Andrew Neil's monologue at "Times at One" yesterday, and posted on X "BETRAYAL  And still the revelations about Peter Mandelson’s betrayals from the heart of government come, each one more jaw-dropping than the last.  We learned earlier this week that he’d tipped off his convicted paedophile mate about an imminent €500bn bailout of the Eurozone, advance information hugely useful to a financial fixer like Jeffrey Epstein.   Even more incredibly, we saw how he’d advised America’s most powerful banker, via Epstein, to threaten the British government over plans to tax bankers’ bonuses in the wake of the Great Financial Crash, caused by said bankers.  Which the powerful banker then did in an intimidating call to then Chancellor Alastair Darling. A call inspired by the government’s very own business secretary, one Peter Mandelson.   Now we learn that the moment Mandelson was given a note about a highly sensitive meeting between Darling and then US T...

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured." Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) Yes, I have used this quote before, but in the past few years I have found that reminding myself of it has become more and more necessary given the number of terrible things happening in the world and sily thigs being said and written about them.

Today is the 52nd anniversary of the M62 coach bombing, one of the worst terrorist atrocities ever to take place on British soil. Twelve people, including a woman and two small children, were killed when a bomb exploded on a coach carrying off-duty soldiers and their families. An entire family was wiped out by the bomb. Another 38 people, including men, women and children were injured. The authorities believed the attack to be the work of the IRA, who never formally claimed responsibility but implicitly admitted later that this and another two incidents had been " authorised operations carried out by units of the Irish Republican Army. " Here is a plaque commemorating the victims at the M62 Hartshead Moor service station near to where the blast occurred. We will remember them.

“One of the reasons why I am in favor of less government is because when you have more government, industrialists take it over, and the two together form a coalition against the ordinary worker and the ordinary consumer.” Milton Friedman

Andrew Willshire, founder of the independent strategic analytics consultancy Diametrical Ltd, has a great piece on Conservative Home about Kemi Bdenoch's path to renewing the Conservative party and the internal contradictions in the arguments of her critics, particularly those of the recent Conservative defectors to Reform UK. You can read the whole piece at Andrew Willshire: Reform is a Frankenstein’s monster of a party | Conservative Home but here are a few extracts "Ever since the election, there has been a fashion among parts of the right-wing commentator class to tour news studios to demand that the Conservative party have some sort of “reckoning”, an “inquisition” into how and why it failed." "More particularly, it is apparent that the reckoning that they want is primarily for the so-called “Lib Dems in the party” to be expelled. By this account, it was solely the fault of these 40 or so MPs that 14 years of Conservative government failed to result in the New J...

I have written a number of articles on my blog about cases  When clever people do stupid things  and about  Why clever people do stupid things . You will rarely find a more example of a brilliant man who repeatedly does incredibly stupid things than Lord Peter Mandelson. I suspect future historians will gasp in disbelief at how, between 1997 and 2024, three consecutive Labour Prime Ministers (Blair, Brown and Starmer) appointed Peter Mandelson to some of the most important jobs in their power to bestow, and then kept bringing him back and appointing him to new high offices after he repeatedly crashed and burned in disgrace. The temptation to appoint him must have arisen because when he was at his most intelligent, Mandelson was one of the most able, effective and persuasive people Labour had. But it should have been obvious after at most the second time he had to resign in disgrace that when it comes to matters of personal ethics, Mandelson doesn't have the common sense o...

Jeremy Clarkson is not always right. But every now and again he hits the nail on the head. I think he may have a point here ...

"Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them." Thomas Sowell

I put up a quote at the weekend from a column in The Times by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The honesty of the column enormously impressed me: how many senior politicians an you think of who would write for publication that they are concerned about their successor repeating their own mistake? Rishi argues that the politicians' dilemma is this - almost every reputable economist will tell you that if you want to provide decent public services while protecting the standards of living of everyone in society, especially the most vulnerable, the most important  thing you should concentrate on is economic growth. (Even Starmer appeared to understand that at the outset.) But that is "Jam tomorrow" and is rarely at the top of the priority list for swing voters. You can't deliver a better society without growth, and you can't deliver growth if you listen to every trend on social media and the newspapers (or if you listen to a single word that delusional people like the...

 A point to ponder from Roger Scruton on education:

Former Police Officer Charlotte Cadden has been selected as the Conservative candidate for the Gorton & Denton by-election. Charlotte served for 30 years as a Police Officer, both for Greater Manchester Police – where she led a Neighbourhood Policing Team – and the Metropolitan Police Service.     Charlotte is also a trustee of the charity Sex Matters, a member of the LGB Alliance Business Forum and coordinates the Women’s Rights Network in Greater Manchester. She has also been involved in local Conservative politics in Bolton and a school Governor in the area.  Labour have failed the people of this constituency, hammering the local high streets with higher business rates and local residents with higher taxes to pay for more welfare. Meanwhile Reform and the Greens both offer nothing, but fantasy politics built on unfunded promises and socialist economics – with no serious plan to tackle the serious issues our country faces. Only the Conservatives, under Kemi Bad...

Today is Candlemas, also known by various other names including the Feast of the Presentation  of Christ in the Temple. That's why I posted  "When to the temple Mary went" by Johannes Eccard  as my Sunday music spot this morning. Candlemas is usually celebrated in the Anglican church on the nearest Sunday to the second of February, and marks when Joseph and Mary took the infant Jesus to the temple to be dedicated to God, forty days after his birth. This date is also half way between the winter solstice and the Spring Equinox, and thus marks that we have passed the deepest part of winter and re on the way towards Spring.. Some people may be thinking at this point,  "Hang on - didn't the Holy Family flee to Egypt after Jesus was born to avoid the hit squad sent to Bethlehem to kill all infant boys under the age of two by King Herod?" The usual answer to this from Christian scholars is that Jesus, Mary and Joseph did not have to seek refuge in Egypt until the W...

After John Rentoul, chief political correspondent of the Indy, had published the summary below of alleged comments from Tony Blair with his (mostly unflattering) views of various colleagues including Sir Keir Starmer and Gordon Brown, Tomon Doran came back and asked, "If Blair thought Brown was a nutcase, why did he let him keep the second most important job in the country for over a decade?" John Rentoul replied: "He thought he was a brilliant nutcase with a lot of support in the Parliamentary Labour Party." (The passage which inspired this exchange is here:)

"Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage." Winston Churchill

Whether you agree with Rishi Sunak or not, this level of honesty from a senior politician is most unusual, and welcome. The below is from a Times Newspapers article this weekend, by former PM Rishi Sunak. More to follow on this issue.

Today the new Whitehaveen and Workington Conservative team had a great campaigning session in Whitehaven with the Conservative candidate to be Mayor of Cumbria, Mike Starkie.  And here is a great performance of a brilliant piece of music to which to relax after the hard work.  You'll see that Hilary Hahn had a most distinguished audience for this performance!

"Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in decision making. The communication and coordination of these scattered fragments of knowledge is one of the basic problems- perhaps the basic problem- of any society." Thomas Sowell