TELLY A LA FRANCAISE

Having just got back from France where scandal still rages over the private publicity profiteering of men in high (and other) places in the bureaucracy of the box, where television standards are often lower than even the lowest here, it was easy to fall into a light-headed complacency about the gentle British Corporation and the public rather than private profiteering of ITA.

The euphoria was shortlived. For at least in France there is widespread scepticism about the extent to which television is manipulated by the government, whereas goere iments omhere image re, objectivity in the admirable BBC.

may have reacted as a result of watching Alan Delon fight the French Revolution seemingly single-handed, with not a strand of his sleek, black hair out of place; to being subjected for hours on end to the self-satisfied yet nasal tones of Chaban-Delmas philosophizing on justice, morality and participation. This last word has become a national obsession with no plausible explanation having been evolved as to the share in profits—needless to say.

Chaban-Delmas It recalled to mind the rebellious poster which appeared on many walls in Paris in May 1968:

I participate, You participate, He participates, She participates, We participate, They profit.

There is, however, one aspect of French television which is badly needed here— the televizing of parliamentary debates. The whole exercise is extremely revealing in terms of the obsolete nature of the proceedings and open class collaboration.

In France, those who have elected Communist Party members to the National Assembly can watch them debate it out with the centre-left, the centre, the centre-right and the extreme-right in one long example of the futility of peaceful roads to socialism as practiced by the French CP.

British television seemed to provide a refreshing, almost artistic light relief from the ponderous French experience, but when it came to reckoning up the week's viewing it was clear that there had been surfeit of sirs, a galaxy of gurus and a dreadfully disturbing dwelling-upon the late Duke of Windsor.

No recriminations, no sentimentality said one announcer after another, while engaging in the most avid sentimentality. There are indeed no recriminations-the ex-king is dead, long live the ex-king is the line as his former detractors now pay obsequious homage.

A nation's sentiments have been so colonized by the media that it mourns this one man in a way it has never mourned the slaughter of millions in Vietnam. All human values are lost in a morass of distorted feeling as one programme after another pulls out the desired reaction of romantic sorrow. the air' a turn towards the past-a certain emphasis on aristocracy, a certain trend toward religion. Programming is, of course, largely a matter of accident not design. I impute no conspiracy on the part of the great deciders of telly viewing, nor do I suggest that they could have anticipated the death of the Duke of Windsor.

There has, nevertheless, been during the last week an uncomfortable mixture of aristocratic boot-licking and sacred feet-kissing such as makes the mind boggle. Something is decidely rotten in the state of the middle-class.

'Omnibus' (BBCI) chose to indulge in a well-executed piece of sycophancy with portrait of the fashionable fashion Lichfield, Photographer Patrick otherwise Patrick Anson, Earl of Lichfield, f3m in trust and a stately home in Staffordshire, dubbed the 'most eligible bachelor in the world', 'one of the world's bestdressed men' and, I would add, one of the men who does not need the further publicity of arty television programmes Duke of ndsor: morass of distorted feel ing ector wishes us to be moved by this in one way or another, serves only to illustrate the depth of the sickness.

Were I to concede that the film was quite intelligently directed, I would at the same time be conceding that intelligence at the service of such an end is a debased intelligence.

Even ITV's 'Crime of Passion', a mere light entertainment thriller, contrived to present itself to us in a torrent of titled folk. Lord Ted Willis wrote it. The 'TV Times' in describing it carried the headline: It's a tough life for a girl when Daddy's a Lord'all this because the two leading ladies, Sally Nesbitt and Lalla Ward are, respectively, the daughters of Lord Hunt and the Seventh Viscount Bangor. Equity all round.

'Man Alive' managed to add disturbing if hilarious dimension to this picture of bourgeois disorientation. In mise propraned East middle-class meditation maniacs, the gurgling gurus, the muddled maharishi followers.

The most unsettling phenomenon among the offspring of affluent Europeans and Americans since the eclipse of the Maharishi Maresh Yogi (the Beatles' guru), is the emergence portly (nay, fat) 14-year-old known universally as the Guru Maharaji, whose promoters in England are the Divine Light Mission.

His message is very simple, so simple, that you might, like me, have missed it altogether. He has THE WORD but the WORD cannot be spoken. He has THE SOUND DU l SOUND cannot be heard. He has THE HOLY NAME but the question is, what is THE HOLY NAME.

He also has a private army, a private limousine, very private bank account, private solicitors and private accountants. All in the name of love. His followers have just bought Everyone has heard of the gazumping of property prices now rampant throughout the country. Unwitting buyers turn up to purchase only to ind the orice has soared beyond hope as estate agents take advantage of the sellers' market.

One unfortunate woman in Islington, North London, has just had the experience of seeing the price of a flat she was after zoom up by £500 in two days. This is the equivalent of about £10 an hour or £180,000 a year.

She first became interested in buying the flat, consisting of two rooms, kitchen and bathroom, with part central heating, in March of this year.

The flat was let to friends of hers. The friends were offered the chance of buying the property but declined and decided to move out.

Gue explained: 'My friend was kind enough to inform the agents that I was interested in buying the flat. That was in early March. I understood they had offered the flat to my friend at about £5,790,. so I offered £6,000. They said they would "get in touch with me"!

This is where the fun started. On April 26 the prospective buyer, Mrs Gilmour, received a letter dated April 26 saying the asking price was £6,950.

Two days later another letter said the flat was in better condition than the rest in the block. The asking price was increased to £7,450.

Not surprisingly the agents had no more to say except for the exciting revelation that they were acting 'on behalf of clients.

It seems there are no bounds to the International Socialists' desire to snuggle up to the Communist Party. A fit of editorial blindness struck IS's 'Socialist Worker' last week when reporting the presidential election in the Electrical and Plumbing Trades Union.

As Workers Press pointed out on Monday, there are six candidates in the field.

They are Frank Chapple, the union's right-wing general secretary; Jim Dormer, a contracting electrician who is a member of the Socialist Labour League; Fred Gore, a Communist Party shop steward at London's Heathrow airport; Eric Hammond, _an executive member and ex-Labour councillor; Roy Sanderson, a former CPer who joined Chapple's camp as a national officer; and national officer Mark Young, another right-winger.

The gospel according to 'Socialist Worker' is slightly different. Sanderson is inexplicably omitted. For reasons which are all too obvious, however, Dormer also goes out of the window.

This glaring credibility gap is then filled with a straightforward, old-fashioned lie.

We are told that Gore, who IS clearly wants its EPTU members to support, is 'the only rank-and-file candidate'. No mention is made of his policies. There is no reference to the fact that his election address does not call for the removal of the Tory governDormer : painted out by Since Dormer's candidature is not mentioned, there is, of course, no need to mention the fact that his is the only address which calls for action to replace the Tories with a Labour government committed to a clear socialist programme.

Thus the debate is carried out in all the traditions of the Stalinists IS wants to get close to-the liars and falsifiers who painted Trotsky out of historybook photographs rather than explain his relationship with Lenin.