In 1979 The Times wasn’t published for about a year because of industrial action. To this day those on the left call it a lock-out, not to be confused with an infinitely more agreeable lock-in, and the rest of us call it a strike.
I remember it well, as Maurice Chevalier croons with Hermione Gingold in Gigi – the 1958 film. This comes after his pervy number – Thank Heaven for Little Girls. I also remember buying Not Yet The Times, a super spoof written I think by Times journalists with time on their hands. Unfortunately I didn’t keep it. All the horses in Roy Thomson’s stable were non-runners and this included The Times Literary Supplement, a long distance stayer. To continue the tortured racing analogy, a first time runner came out, spotting a gap in the field, and briefly had the race to itself.
The London Review of Books was started in 1979 and was not beaten when the TLS re-started. It has a small readership, circa 75,000, and now including me. Why? The articles are much longer than space allows in newspapers or magazines. It is a badge of the intelligentsia – something worth flashing should you ever board a ‘plane or train again. Not least, the introductory subscription is £12 for 48 editions; it comes out fortnightly.
The only review I have read so far is by Eric Foner, who teaches history at Columbia. The books are Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College, by Alexander Keyssar, stupefyingly long, and Let The People Pick the President: the Case for Abolishing the Electoral College, by Jesse Wegman, slightly shorter and a bit cheaper. Eric Foner’s article shines light on, simplifies, a complex subject and I heartily recommend his review – there is no need to read the books. As you may not read it, it joins Colonel Gaddafi, in his Green Book, in pointing out the democratic deficit in the US electoral system – we have the same problem in the UK, I might add. Foner necessarily restricts himself to the deficiencies of an electoral college. He does not address the two party problem, (not to be confused with the two Martini lunch) one which the majority of voters in the US and UK, being supporters of the two parties, are reluctant to address. If society is going to change after the big virus, something I doubt, a fairer way of choosing elected representatives would be a good start.