(When Mr Kelly described David Kelly as “a Walter Mitty” to an Independent journalist, he was not acting as a dispassionate civil servant.) Replacing Mr Campbell with two civil servants was, in fact, a public relations ploy (spin, in other words), designed to try to take the personal and political heat out of Downing Street’s dealings with the Westminster pack.It would be more honest to have a political figure in this role, which is why the appointment of David Hill, a drop-forged Labour man, is welcome. When Alastair Campbell withdrew from the daily briefing of journalists, he should not have been replaced by the civil servants Godric Smith and Tom Kelly. It was wrong, for example, that Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher’s loyal press secretary, should have been a civil servant. While departmental press officers dealing with crime figures or child tax credits can be civil servants, it is not a good idea for civil servants to speak for the Prime Minister or to oversee the Government’s media strategy.These are political roles, and should be carried out by political appointees. It is that it is somehow wrong for government spokespeople to be political appointees This is the reverse of the truth. The responsibility is political and it lies squarely with Mr Blair himself.There is, however, a contradiction in the demands made of the Prime Minister which needs to be resolved before judging the new communications structure. An abiding fault of his Government has been hype, exaggeration, over-egging and sexing up.
His reorganisation of Downing Street this week is a small step in the right direction, but there can be no institutional fix for the problem of spin.

When Tony Blair was asked at his news conference yesterday if his changes marked the “end of spin”, he could have said that that would be like announcing the end of politics But he knew what was meant. These are political roles, and should be carried out by political appointees. Ultimately, it is up to Tony Blair not to overclaim and to ensure that those who work for him do not spin on his behalf. It is not a good idea for civil servants to speak for the Prime Minister or to oversee the Government’s media strategy, in a bid to stop the culture of spin. Compact discs were a huge windfall for the music industry, allowing it to reissue its backlist and sell it all over again. Nothing wrong with that – the demand for digital quality sound was there – but the companies were greedy and kept the price of CDs artifically high. Although a Competition Commission inquiry cleared them of price fixing nine years ago, Universal’s decision to cut the price of CDs by a quarter is a belated admission of what should have been obvious.If CD prices had been lower, the pirates and downloaders would have made less headway and the music industry would be in better shape now..

Talking of spin, the propaganda put out by the publishers of rotating plastic discs would have us believe that music piracy is responsible for plagues of boils, late-running trains and dog dirt on pavements.
The reality is that they are largely the authors of their own decline. If CD prices had been lower, the pirates and downloaders would have made less headway and the music industry would be in better shape now. Supremely elegant herself and (with good reason) a little vain, she appreciated beauty in others even more. She adored taking photographs and writing letters, both a chronicle less of her own than of the lives of all she knew.”Dear Madam,” wrote Johnson to Mrs Thrale on her husband’s death, The world is not so unjust or unkind as it is peevishly represented, those who deserve well seldom fail to receive from others such services as they can perform, but few have much in their power, or are so stationed as to have great leisure from their own affairs, and kindness must be commonly the exuberance of content.Mary, Viscountess Eccles had that power and found the leisure: her kindness was uncommonly exuberant.Nicolas Barker. Her own collected essays and addresses, Mary Hyde Eccles: a miscellany, were edited by William Zachs and published in 2002 by the Grolier Club – of which, too, she had been one of the first women members.Childless herself, she delighted in the stepchildren of her second marriage and their children, and in the company of children anywhere She made the giving of presents a fine art.

The five- volume “Hyde Edition” of The Letters of Samuel Johnson (Princeton University Press, 1992-94), edited by Bruce Redford, is the definitive monument to the collection. She rose triumphantly to the challenge when the Marquess of Lansdowne decided in 1993 to sell the inherited letters of Johnson to “Queeney” (Hester Maria Thrale). Together now – but it was her idea – they founded the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library in 1992. She now single-handed took on the task of restoring Boswell’s Auchinleck in Ayrshire, virtually a ruin, and lived to see it become a habitable dwelling under the care of the Landmark Trust.Her devotion to the Four Oaks collection remained unchanged, and after Lord Eccles’s death Gabriel Austin, editor of the memorial book Four Oaks Library (1967), came to watch over it and her.