42 the spectator | 7 september 2019 | http://www.spectator.co.uk
BOOKS & ARTS
Radio
Have they got news
for you
Kate Chisholm
It’s such a relief to turn on the radio and
hear the voice of Neil MacGregor. That
reasoned authority, his deep knowledge of
history and how things have come to be as
they are, his measured common sense and
ability to see round an argument or story.
He’s like the voice of how things used to
be, when the world was not so topsy-tur-
vy and the news reports made sense. His
series, As Others See Us, returns to Radio
4 this week (produced by Tom Alban), tak-
ing him this time to Singapore, the USA,
Australia, Poland and Spain to talk to peo-
ple there about Britain’s past connections,
present woes and future prospects. It’s fas-
cinating, salutary, and more than a little
disturbing.
Take Singapore, for instance. MacGregor
finds plenty of evidence for those colonial
connections, laid down in 1819 when Stam-
ford Raffles established British rule over
the colony. But how do the denizens of that
unusual city-state see us now? The charac-
terful Catherine Lim grew up reciting ‘Daf-
fodils’ by heart at her convent school as did
her contemporary Tommy Koh, a former
diplomat who spent many years at the Unit-
ed Nations. She became a writer in English
because of her love for the books of Richmal
Crompton. She was brought up to accept
that British culture was superior, and every
day looked at a picture of Princess Anne,
pinned up on the wall of her classroom. This,
in spite of the disillusion that followed the
fall of Singapore in 1942.
MacGregor reminds us that in places
such as Singapore the British displayed
not so much ‘tenacity and resolve’, as an
‘incapacity to shape events on its own, and
to keep the promises that it had made to
its allies’. Koh added that it was the sec-
ond world war that brought about a com-
plete change in the way that the ‘colonial
peoples’ regarded Britain. They could no
longer depend for their defence and future
development on the UK but realised they
needed to build alliances with their imme-
diate neighbours.
In 1967 Singapore co-founded Asean
(the Association of South-east Asian
Nations) and, says Koh, ‘it has given us 50
years of peace’. He can’t understand why
‘a slim majority’ in the UK voted to leave
the European Union. We should, says Koh,
‘be so grateful that the second half of the
Eighty per cent of young people
here have turned to posting ‘fake
news’ for $5,000 a monthTelevision
Licensed to thrill
James Walton
How did the police ever solve any crimes
before CCTV? That was the question which
sprang to mind watching the first episodes of
two highly promising new crime dramas this
week. It’s also the central question now fac-
ing the detective in one of them.
Part police officer, part career women,
Rachel Carey in The Capture (BBC1, Tues-
day) is being fast-tracked through the sys-
tem to the traditional disapproval of her
grizzled, old-school boss DCI Alex Boyd —
imaginatively known as Boydy. Fortunately,
Rachel (Holliday Grainger) won’t be with
his unit for long. Having saved Britain from
a deadly terrorist attack while working for
special ops, she’s been sent there temporarily
to see how she might handle a high-profile
murder or kidnapping.
And as luck would have it, she didn’t
have to wait long. Within hours, CCTV
street footage obligingly showed a woman
being attacked and apparently abducted by
a soldier. The trouble was that the soldier
in question turned out to be Shaun Emery
(Callum Turner), who’d just been released
from prison after video evidence of him exe-
cuting a Taleban insurgent was revealed as
unreliable. (‘You do know your suspect is a
national hero,’ Boydy gleefully pointed out.)
Pausing only to punch several inves-
tigating officers in the face, Shaun insist-
ed that the CCTV footage was also faked
in some unspecified way. The first part, in
which he and his improbably glamorous
defence lawyer celebrated their appeal vic-
tory with a kiss, he accepted as real; but not
the bit where he smashed her to the ground
and dragged her towards his car. At which
point, the security services had a quiet word
with Boydy and ordered that the footage be
redacted anyway.
So, Rachel is now forced to wonder, what
other evidence is there? (None.) Come to
that, why are the spooks involved? (Who
knows?) As for the big one, did Shaun do
it?, Rachel’s suspicion is that he did, but is
suffering some sort of PTSD-induced amne-
sia. Then again, she may not have as much
experience of big TV twists as we non-fic-
tional types.
At this stage, in other words, I don’t
have a clue what’s going on — but I can’t
wait to find out. And that, for the open-
ing episode of a thriller, is pretty much the
definition of mission accomplished.20th century was not a repeat of the first
half’, because of the EU.
His words were echoed by a World Ser-
vice documentary on Wednesday. The new
series, Detours (made in an intriguing alli-
ance with the Sundance Institute of Utah),
seeks to find out why and how people’s lives
suddenly change direction, focusing each
week on a different global story from Bul-
garia to Assam via America and an island
in the Pacific. In the first programme, David
Borenstein travelled to Veles in North Mac-
edonia to find out why it has become the
‘fake news’ capital of the world. It’s not a
comfortable listen.
He talks to Elena, a medical student,
who decided to start creating ‘fake news’ as
a way of paying her bills, rather than spend-
ing months each year working in a petrol
station in Germany. She was planning to
become a surgeon. It was so easy, she says,
and many people she knew were already
doing it. She explains how it’s done.
First create a website (and there are
plenty of neighbours in Veles who will help
you to do this, she promised). Next identify
your target group (you can do research on
Facebook, she advised). You need to find
a group (such as feminists or Trump vot-
ers, it was suggested) who ‘really believe in
something’, because then it’s much easier to
persuade them to click. Third, find an article
that affirms their opinions. Copy and paste.
And post on Facebook.
With luck, if you have chosen the right
kind of article, and given it a suitably ‘emo-
tional’ heading, you will attract attention, or
clicks, to your website, for which Google and
others like them are ready to pay. Suddenly, it
becomes possible to earn $5,000 a month (30
times more than an average monthly salary in
Veles). Eighty per cent of young people in the
town have been tempted into creating these
‘fake stories’, following the collapse of indus-
try. Elena began by finding a video of Trump
that was critical of him, which appealed to his
supporters by demanding sympathy for him
as the underdog. It went viral in a couple of
hours, with 50,000 likes or shares.
Elena regrets what she did and has goneback to working in Germany in between
her courses. In late 2016 a lot of the web-
sites were closed down by Google and
Facebook. But, as Borenstein was told, ‘It’s
too late.’ Veles is gearing up for 2020.‘Good news! You’re too rich to notice
you’re poorer.’Ireland is one such place. It forms the main focus of this exhibition, illing Messum’s gallery with the potent blues and violets and rich
grey-greens characteristic of the countryside that skirts the Atlantic ocean.Sept - Fri 4
aturday 14 & Sunday 15 September
ord’s Wood Sculpture Garden & Studio& Artist Talk
Co. Kerry - Evening Clouds over Skellig Rock oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)
The Studio, Lord’s Wood, Marlow, Bucks SL7 2QS Tel: +44 (0)1628 486565 http://www.messums.com E:[email protected]
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws