In my professional capacity, copytaking is an occasional, sometimes fraught, sometimes pleasurable, aspect.  Owing to that relative infrequency, it has been decided by a higher bod that it is to phased out from my remit.  I have had some interesting copy over the years such as direct from Basra (over a terrible line) and Kabul (Ben Farmer covering an international pomegranate fair – when I mentioned this to him as he dictated copy from Libya, it came across that this was a quixotic episode he would rather forget).  I have taken scintillating book and television reviews and recorded the scores of amateur golf in the Midlands (the correspondent Jennifer Prentice discontinued this after they were not published repeatedly).  A regular freelancer was John Shaw, who was always a welcome voice in his geniality and up for a laugh, inbetween some auction news of rare or antique objects.  He often gave great background to the subject which was often trimmed back to a news in brief at best (one story had a misprinted stamp over a biplane flying upside down and The Telegraph actually sourced the picture from the auction house to accompany it).  No doubt frustrated at The Telegraph not showing enough interest in his work, he has not been heard over the phone for quite some time now.

I can’t imagine that The Telegraph will keep the out of hours copytaking company on its books if they are removing us from such duties when they were getting us for free.  Cutbacks mean that in future the outside journalist will have to phone up the relevant newsdesk in head office, which makes sense but is just speculation on my part.

To wit, the comment report I took from Theodore Dalrymple last Wednesday may very well be my last.  Mr Dalrymple seems to not have a specific job at The Telegraph (the predictive email address finder could not locate him – even were he not to have access at home, he would have an account for his forays into the office), yet the Dalrymple name is an important and respected one.  I was gratified to see that his piece opened Thursday’s comment section, not least because I had pointed out the odd repeated word here or there and my suggested synonym had been accepted. 

As often with commentary rather than news, it was designed to provoke through counter-intuitive reasoning (Jonathan Steele’s pronouncements on Syria in The Guardian might carry greater weight if they weren’t so overtly one-sided apologia for the Assad regime – if you want ‘competing biases’ go to Fox News).  Mr Dalrymple’s piece defended the captain of the ill-fated and ill-named Costa Concordia for his decision to abandon the ship before the evacuation was complete, though Captain Schettino’s incompetence was another matter altogether.  We have since heard from Schettino that he ‘tripped’ and fell into a lifeboat and then was taken away before he could get out – which reminded me of the sarcastic saying of someone caught red-handed in an extramarital affair – ‘oh you just tripped and fell on his dick/her pussy’, with exactly the same amount of credibility attached.  Dalrymple argued that the notion of a captain going down with his ship was old-fashioned romanticism that a ‘utilitarian zeitgeist [the latter word being an accepted suggestion of mine]’ scorned.  Schettino’s culture was responsible for his premature departure, not because he was Italian but because he was modern.  Would staying behind have ensured no further loss of life than that which had already occurred?  Schettino would have on his conscience for the rest of his life all those who had perished.  I recognise the merits of Dalrymple’s argument but I personally disagree.  If you take on the role of sea-faring captain, then it is beholden of you to be the last to leave, especially if it was your mistake that caused the disaster.  Like structures and material, ship’s captains should be stress-tested for the suitability of application to the task.