















The leaves blow through the glass
as dreams float in the room
and people I have travelled with
climb up these timbered stairs.
Memories coat the walls,
days wander down the lane;
there is no telling where the tales
of drunken nights have gone.
Church-bells punctuate the moon,
screams open up the dawn,
and I see Jennifer lying there,
poems oozing from her smiles.
At morning, Ingrid, with her little hands,
brings coffee to my brain
and Karin calls at evening’s door
with wine to ease the pain.
All these dancing moments,
the dripping down of hours;
this house’s chest is heaving
with the loss of human touch.
I drink those sunken days
and know the gulps are fleeting
but the moonlight-stains on the empty bed
will show we bled
for love.
KEITH ARMSTRONG




York is in spate.
Schoolgirls runThe idea of democratic flag-bearers died decades ago. I can count on one hand those brave enough to speak truth to power

They are the pillars of the community, champions of the underdog, the scourge of corruption, defenders of free speech. Their demise could deal a mortal blow to democracy. Any guesses yet? How many of you thought of local newspapers?
But this is the universal view of the national media: local papers – half of which, on current trends, are in danger of going down in the next five years – are all that stand between us and creeping dictatorship.
Like my colleagues, I mourn their death; unlike them I believe it happened decades ago. For many years the local press has been one of Britain's most potent threats to democracy, championing the overdog, misrepresenting democratic choices, defending business, the police and local elites from those who seek to challenge them. Media commentators lament the death of what might have been. It bears no relationship to what is.
I'm prompted to write this by a remarkable episode in my home town, Machynlleth, which illustrates the problem everywhere. A battle has been raging here over Tesco's attempt to build a superstore on the edge of town. Its application received 685 letters of objection and five letters of support, but the town council, which appears to believe everything Tesco says, supports the scheme. The local paper, the Cambrian News, appears in turn to believe everything the council tells it.
A couple of weeks ago consultants hired by Powys county council published a retail impact assessment which supports the arguments put forward by the objectors. If the new store is built, the assessment says, it will cause trade in the centre to decline and generate longer and less sustainable shopping trips. How did the Cambrian News respond to this devastating blow to Tesco's application? By running a smear job on its front page.
According to the town clerk, the consultants had fabricated a complaint by the local butcher. They had claimed to represent his views in their assessment, saying that he feared he would be forced out of business by Tesco – "but they haven't even spoken to him!". The Cambrian News, ironically, ran this story without speaking to the butcher, the consultants, or, apparently, performing even the briefest check. Its only informants were the town clerk and the councillors, who lined up to say that the behaviour of the consultants was "disgusting", that they were "scaremongering" and that they should apologise to the butcher. It took me 30 seconds to discover that the story was completely untrue: the assessment says nothing about the butcher or his shop.
I asked the editor of the Cambrian News to tell me whether her reporter had read the assessment before filing his story, or whether anyone at the paper had checked it. Her response was priceless. "Any information that we obtain, we keep exclusively for the Cambrian News and do not pass it on to rival newspapers." I pointed out that I wasn't trying to steal her non-story, but asking her to defend her decision to publish it. She has not replied.
This petty affair is a synecdoche for the state of local journalism. Most local papers exist to amplify the voices of their proprietors and advertisers and other powerful people with whom they wish to stay on good terms. In this respect they scarcely differ from most of the national media. But they also contribute to what in Mexico is called caciquismo: the entrenched power of local elites. This is the real threat to local democracy, not the crumpling of the media empires of arrogant millionaires.
Since May, Roy Greenslade, professor of journalism at City University, has been running a series on the Guardian's website called "Why local papers count". It's a brave effort, but it demonstrates the opposite of what he sets out to show. In six months he has managed to provide just one instance of real journalism: a report by the Kentish Express on the inflated costs of upgrading a local road. Otherwise he appears to have found no example of local papers holding power to account.
There's one respect in which the local press is confronting power: by campaigning against the free papers published by local authorities. These, the papers say, are propaganda sheets, which provide a biased view of council business. Does that sound familiar? In his book Flat Earth News, Nick Davies cites a survey of press releases issued across two months by Northumberland county council. Ninety-six percent of them were turned into stories by local papers. In many cases the papers copied the releases verbatim; in no case did they add any information. They might as well have been published by the council.
The failures of the local press are often blamed on consolidation by the big media corporations, which have squeezed as much money out of their collapsing possessions as they can, leaving no funds for real journalism. Davies, for example, asked a reporter on a regional paper to keep a diary for a week. In just five days the reporter published 48 stories. He came across one original story in that period, but he didn't have time to pursue it, so he let it drop. Otherwise he just recycled old copy, lifted stories from other papers or simply concocted them.
But this is not the whole reason for the failure of the local press. The Cambrian News, for instance, is owned by the man who is universally hailed as the only success story in local publishing: Sir Ray Tindle. His company, which runs 230 papers, is independent, free from debt and booming, but it suffers from many of the diseases that afflict the rest of the press. When the Iraq war began, Tindle ordered his editors "to ensure that nothing appears in your newspapers which attacks the decision to conduct the war". His letter was reproduced in the Totnes Times, with the following comments. "In a brave move, which could easily be seen by some as censoring the news, Sir Ray ordered that once war in Iraq was declared his newspapers would not carry any more anti-war stories … As editorial manager of eight of Sir Ray's titles, I am proud to say I totally agree with his decision."
It's true that the vacuity and cowardice of the local papers has been exacerbated by consolidation, profit-seeking, the collapse of advertising revenues and a decline in readership. But even if they weren't subject to these pressures, they would still do more harm than good. Local papers defend the powerful because the powerful own and fund them. I can think of only two local newspapers that consistently hold power to account: the West Highland Free Press and the Salford Star. Are any others worth saving? If so, please let me know. Yes, we need a press that speaks truth to power, that gives voice to the powerless and fights for local democracy. But this ain't it.

(For Gary)
There’s a man in Paxton
who is researching stars
and that musical telescope of his
stares out of the village window
to pierce a broader darkness.
There is a universal symphony in his breath,
picked up from the folk whistling
in the rain-kissed street.
There’s a child singing across the borders
and the sky is a chorus
of screaming clouds.
Our man of music in Paxton
scratches notes as he opens his mind.
He calls out
under the leaping rainbow
for a song to enter
his soul.
He wants to name a star after his wife.
He wants to write Jane a song.
There is nothing more beautiful than the sight of Space:
‘Nothing more terrible than the beauty of music’, he says.
And, while his songs are soaring to the stars,
in the name of his radiant life,
he knows his Dad’s bones are cracking with age
and he knows there are days
when his guitar will sob
in the village darkness.
But, tonight, he has named a star ‘Jane’
and, while life is forever such struggle,
he has written a lovely song in Paxton
and taught his son Archie to dance in the sky.
Keith Armstrong

(in memory of Mick Standen)
I have lost my roaring boys and girls.
They are left behind,
fallen from Collegium stools;
the poignant moments in Lange Gasse dust.
Times and laughter shared,
dwindled to an Ammer trickle
in a bleak semester,
worn out days.
Friends are for leaving.
I’m afraid
I am too old to chase it.
These young Swabian mistresses
are too damned quick
for me to grab anymore
their lightning glances,
hints of a possible romance
boarding trains,
flickering
in frigid seminar rooms.
Tear yourself from me
as I stumble
through security.
I know I’ll miss
your touch.
Horst has gone from Hades bar,
Paddy from the Boulanger,
Gerd has flown
to China.
Now Mick has slipped away
and all those twinning hours.
Nothing is still.
Her eyelashes flicker,
new wounds open;
the light streams on Wilhelmstrasse,
darkness fills Hafengasse.
A special sunlight
sparkles in my beer,
shafts of it
dart on the counter.
A bird flaps
across my face,
shadow
of a former glory.
So that’s the story:
we lose it all,
we lose everything
and everyone.
It’s why I cling
to the night wind
beating against my cheeks,
to the whisper of the leaves
along this dull suburban street.
The old voices
of mates I made
howling
through the mediocrity
of lonely petrol stations,
soul-destroying car parks.
Puddles
of former joy
winking at the moon.
KEITH ARMSTRONG



