'O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts...'

Oh dear! I promised the Spouse I would stop thinking about the Dominic Cummings affair (I was getting very grumpy; I hate seeing anyone bullied, particularly where a young child is involved) yet here I am sitting down to write about it - tangentially, at least.

For anyone who has spent time in teaching, there's something very familiar about the way certain journalists are behaving. While I agree that the broadcast media have a duty to question the actions of those in power, there comes a time when their continued aggressive persistance starts to look more than a little juvenile: "Yes, Laura, I am well aware that Dominic jumped the lunch queue and no, that does not mean everyone else can do it too."

Over the past decades, over and above the demands of the curriculum, there are three things about which I have tried to teach all of my pupils: Occam's Razor, Utilitarianism and the Tragedy of the Commons (with a dash of Socrates thrown in).  The idea is to give them a toolkit with which they can approach and objectively analyse whatever life throws at them.

Having a framework of this kind is particularly beneficial for those pupils who, while capable and intelligent, find themselves permanently cross-threaded in the machinery of life. Frequently - but not exclusively - this is associated with something like high-functioning ASD (Asperger Syndrome), where being less able than most to rely on intuitive or conditioned grasp of societal norms means you frequently end up trying to work everything out from first principles on a logical basis.

Now, it is certainly not my place to speculate about Mr Cummings, but I'd guess from the 'weirdos and misfits' job description (and his reported lack of 'people skills') that he is no stranger to that way of thinking; in fact, his approach all along has been characterised by a willingness - or determination - to take things apart and question everything.

That being so, it was almost inevitable that, faced with a unique and complex combination of circumstances (including potential threats to his home and family), he would go back to basics and attempt to find the most rational solution possible rather than simply obeying the shorthand general advice that he, among others, had promulgated.

It's the tragedy of the commons, of course; one family group changing quarters makes little or no difference but a multitude doing so is a very different matter. Cummings, by reasoning from an individual rather than a collective viewpoint, opened himself up to the spittle-flecked (and somewhat ironic) bellows of 'Hypocrite!' from the crowd besieging his home.

It is possible that his judgement was impaired by the virus - the speed with which he succumbed to the illness on arrival suggests he may have been his usual incisive self - but, whatever the case, it is hardly reasonable to suggest that what he did entitled any Tom, Dick or Harry to pile the kids into the car and head off for a jolly day out at the coast, whatever the pundits may say.

Reason, however, has been taking a holiday, at least as far as a certain sector of journalism is concerned; think of the closely-packed mob shoving microphones and cameras in his face (are we allowed to say 'the pot calling the kettle black' these days?) or the endless attempts to shoe-horn criticism of him into unrelated news stories. Selective reporting - and what looks increasingly like the opportunistic settling of scores - has pushed the story onto the front pages and kept it there.

The end result begins to look more and more like an unrelenting attempt to unseat Mr Cummings (and possibly the Prime Minister) at all costs. Another thing I teach my pupils is always to ask 'cui bono?'; whether it's because of Brexit, the BBC, No. 10's internal affairs or simply party politics, Mr Cummings' problem is that, in his case, the answer is a very long list indeed.

Corbyn addresses the faithful

It's good to see Jeremy Corbyn's commitment to recycling: full marks to Alex Massie at the Spectator for listing the verbatim borrowings from a 2011 speech written for (and rejected by) Ed Miliband.

Personally I'm not sure how much it matters. In the great tradition of party conferences, no-one there really bothers too much about the minutiae of  the leader's speech; they just join in when they like the tune.

Since I have decided I am allergic to politicians (or perhaps it's just an intolerance), I shall, at this point, refer you to Caedmon's Cat, who comments at length on the rise of Corbyn far more stylishly than I ever could -  I invite you to join me in a raising a glass to the author of phrases such as 'a boil on the buttock politic'.

Meanwhile, having taken the tongue-in-cheek (I hope!) quiz from the Telegraph (back in August), I have been told that

"You don’t like Corbyn, or his ideas. No matter who you vote for, extremist Corbynistas condemn you as an Evil Tory."

I can't say it comes as a complete surprise - though coming from the Telegraph, I do rather wonder whether that is the default response.

Actually, there is one idea of Corbyn's I do find palatable; the end of the Punch-and Judy PMQs - although I'm not so sure about the 'Housewife's Choice' sourcing of his questions. Still, whatever else he brings to the table, anything that makes Westminster less infantile is alright in my book.


(I am indebted to the Tavern's resident Wise Woman for the picture, a serendipitous find in an old book of Irish Folk Tales. The resemblance is striking, don't you think?)

The Sunday Songbook

A borrowed piece today:

A Pict Song
Rudyard Kipling

Rome never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass on—that is all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.

We are the Little Folk—we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you’ll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!

Mistletoe killing an oak—
Rats gnawing cables in two—
Moths making holes in a cloak—
How they must love what they do!
Yes—and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they—
Working our works out of view—
Watch, and you’ll see it some day!

No indeed! We are not strong,
But we know Peoples that are.
Yes, and we’ll guide them along
To smash and destroy you in War!
We shall be slaves just the same?
Yes, we have always been slaves,
But you—you will die of the shame,
And then we shall dance on your graves!


And,in case you thought it was fanciful to connect it with modern politics...
.

(link here)

Hot Air, Harman and Hogging It All

Demetrius, as always, hits the nail squarely on the head:

"The sweltering heat in the South and East of England arises from a plume of high pressure caused by hot air movement unusual for this time of year. This is due to a surge of political manifestos."

Foremost among the noxious emissions is the flatulence emanating from Harriet Harman's Big Pink Battle Bus under the guise of a 'Women's Manifesto' - surely as clear an illustration as white facepaint on black celebrities of the principle that discrimination is, for some at least, definitely a one-way street.

Among other gems, this document apparently promises guaranteed childcare from 8am to 6pm, to 'set a goal for fifty per cent of ministerial appointments to public boards to be women' - nothing like ensuring you always get the best person for the job! - and to double paid paternity leave.

It also includes the bright idea of four weeks of unpaid childcare leave for working grandparents; having brought up their own children without the benefit of recent childcare subsidies and tax credits, grandparents are now being invited to forego a month's wages so their grown-up offspring can get to work.

This is apparently because grandmothers "give up their work when the kids are little in order to help the mothers and fathers balance work and home" - in other words, to enable mothers to leave their new babies and find career-based fulfilment in the workplace in the approved feminist fashion.

This, it turns out, is less than ideal for the grandmothers, who put their own careers on hold while youth has its day "and then find that they can't go back to work once the children are back at school because once you're in your late 50s and early 60s it's really hard for a woman to get a job then."

Really Harriet? Could this, perhaps, be because the posts for which they are they are suitably qualified and experienced are already occupied by mothers who have farmed out their children on a daily basis in order to get straight back into the workplace?

It all reminds me of 1990s City superwoman Nicola Horlick, interviewed in her kitchen on how she successfully managed her career and family while her mother silently tackled a sinkful of washing-up in the background. According the the Mail, 'Research suggests 1.9 million grandparents have given up a job, reduced their hours, or taken time off work to look after their grandchildren.'

It appears that the 'having it all' generation of career women, encouraged by the likes of Harman, not only want the taxpayer to fund their childcare but also expect their mothers to sacrifice their own careers to take up the slack; how fortunate, then, that Harman's happy compromise means the grandparents only lose a month's salary instead!

As a bonus, this issue has given us a contender for the most meaningless soundbite of the campaign so far - though, as ever, there's plenty of competition:

"When asked about whether he was assuming that older women could afford to work for free, Mr Miliband said that this was "about going with the grain of people's lives" and that the modern workplace needed to reflect "the reality of family life"."

A prestigious award

Out with the Oscars! Banish the Baftas! Douglas Carswell, newly-hatched UKIP MP and occasional muse of this blog has been shortlisted for the Westminster Public Affairs’ Political Twitter Awards 2015 (nope, me neither).

He's one of six hopeful contenders for the Funniest Tweet Award with:

“Are there enough Lib Dems left to form a circular firing squad?”

It's not exactly going to have them rolling in the aisles, but I suppose that, in politics, you have to take your laughs where you can find them.

Still, it's better to be known for that than for the fact your daughter used your twitter account to invite all your 28,000 followers to play 'Hello Kitty World'. In any case, Carswell probably needs cheering up, since the other boys in Parliament have been hiding his homework and calling him names:

He said: “The Bufton Tufton element of the Tory party has definitely started to get a bit cross with me.” But he wouldn’t be drawn on how they had expressed their distaste – and insisted he didn’t care. 

Last month, Carswell arrived at his place on the House of Commons benches to find that someone had scrawled “FO” on his prayer card – short for “F*** Off”.

Wouldn't it be nice if the next election brought us a crop of grown-ups - or, even better, a Parliament prepared to work together for the greater good of the British people. No chance of that, of course; the tribalism and point-scoring is far too deeply ingrained.

As for the Lib Dems, with Nick Clegg in charge, the result is surely something more like this...

Why I Am No Longer a Feminist

(Are you sitting comfortably? I fear this is going to be a long post....)

Feminism has been much in the news recently so this is, I suppose, a good time to admit that I have been there, done that and bought the boiler suit.

In the high and far-off times, I talked the talk, walked the walk - still do; I can't shake off a determined stride that is death to kitten heels - and stood shoulder to shoulder with the Sisterhood, Reclaiming the Night, subscribing to Spare Rib and running a university Women's Group (through which I achieved my sole claim to media fame; being (mis)quoted in Private Eye's 'Wimmin' column).

So what happened? Well, for one thing, many of the issues for which we marched have been resolved - in Britain, at least - through legislation, rule changes and the natural wastage of residual misogyny among those in high places, some of whom, back then, had been born to mothers who could not vote until the age of 30.

Today's young British women are looking at a world where very few doors are closed against them, and most of those for medical or anatomical reasons, as legal and economic pressure opens their way into such former bastions of masculinity as sporting clubs, the Church of England, public schools and even, potentially, front-line combat.

Like racism, discrimination is apparently a one-way street, making it acceptable - if not desirable - to select all-women shortlists and promote women in preference to men; equality is clearly not a consideration.Thus Gordon Brown could announce in 2010 that  'Under Labour, there are more students at university than ever before and I'm happy to say the majority of them are women'.

With the demise of these time-honoured establishment targets, feminists might have turned their attention to those British women whose freedoms are still curtailed by cultural and religious attitudes or by their own low expectations and early single motherhood were it not for the small matter of politics.

For left-leaning feminists, the idea of reform from the top down was a pleasing one; criticising potential working-class Labour voters or confronting the less agreeable aspects of the multiculturalism we were told to 'celebrate' was quite another matter. In the same way, many feminists are strangely reticent on the subject of women's status in less enlightened parts of the world.

In any case, liberation is relative: as Robbie Coltrane's character in the TV series 'Cracker' once pointed out, "While you're out lecturing on Women's Studies and career opportunities, some poor cow's got her arm half-way round your U-bend". There are plenty of high-flying self-styled feminists who apparently see nothing incongruous in their household outsourcing the domestic chores to an assortment of low-paid females.

What was needed was a less contentious target, which brings us to the elephant quietly gestating in the corner of the room; as Lynne Featherstone helpfully explained, “One of the main barriers to full equality in the UK is the fact that women still have babies" (some have even managed to outsource that to other women but surrogacy is, as yet, comparatively rare).

Until we reach Huxley's Brave New World, biology still has the upper hand and modern feminists are really, really annoyed about it. Motherhood is, of course, their right and prerogative, but how dare this helpless infant require their presence when they could be climbing the promotion ladder and hammering on the glass ceiling!

Fortunately childcare, too, can be outsourced, thanks to a host of feminist-approved government policies subsidising nursery places for babies as young as six weeks. The doctrine of 'quality time' theoretically allows mothers to return to work with a clear conscience, reassured that two days with the baby at the end of a busy working week is enough.

Imagine the outcry if zoo staff walked into the primate cages on weekday mornings and removed every infant chimpanzee or gorilla from its mother's arms to a distant crèche until the zoo closed for the night. While human mothers may not suffer - consciously, at least - in the same way as their ape counterparts would, what of the helpless infants persistently deprived of their mothers' presence throughout their waking hours?

Many of the feminists of my day, celebrating centuries-old traditions from a variety of cultures, embraced the idea of motherhood as an equal and alternative assertion of female power and identity; for today's colder, harder activists, it has become a lifestyle choice which must not be allowed to get in the way of advancement, even if the mother herself would prefer to stay with the child.

My brief official involvement with feminism coincided with the last years before Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman unleashed their progressive ideology and overturned the idea of the traditional family in the political arena. While men are viewed with hostility, some of today's feminists reserve their fiercest criticism for well-qualified stay-at-home mothers who have chosen, whatever the financial sacrifice, to take a career break.

I firmly believe that a woman is the intellectual and social equal of a man and should be treated as such - with the proviso that a dependent infant is biologically more important than either man or woman and its needs should come first. With the exception of a few physically demanding jobs, the mind is what matters in the workplace and the hardware that accompanies it should be irrelevant.

But when the term 'feminist' is applied, seemingly without irony, to callipygian celebrities famed for suggestive dance routines or to politicians who seek to separate mothers from their children, and when self-styled feminists celebrate women being promoted over the heads of equally-qualified men, those of us who merely seek an amiable parity and mutual respect need to find another name.

Blackened toast

Politicians generally get short shrift in the Tavern but we are always prepared to be open-minded; this week, therefore, we are raising a brimming tankard to none other than David Cameron.

The Prime Minister was photographed at a folk festival on Saturday amid a Border Morris side complete with traditional costume trappings including - and here's the rub - black face paint.

Given that, these days, an image can travel halfway round the world while the text is putting on its shoes, this could be seen as a somewhat courageous move, in the time-honoured political sense of the word. In the words of one Canadian academic,

"...it seems unlikely that North American audiences who encounter Morris [...] would see in blackface dances anything other than a white peoples' representation of black culture."

Sure enough, even on this side of the Pond, knees are apparently jerking in a veritable Riverdance of protest - at least according to those newspapers doing their best to fan the flames. The Independent, for example, merrily relays this charming example of liberal intolerance:

"If you're a Morris dancer and you want to black up, ask yourself if it's really appropriate. If the answer is yes, you're wrong.”

Never mind over four hundred years of documented practice and the stated aim of disguise, for which soot long provided the cheapest and most effective medium; someone has decided to be offended so it has to stop.

Thanks to recent media fuss over the Bacup Coconutters, whose blackened faces adorned, successively, Will Straw's twitter account and the label of a guest beer in a House of Commons bar*, Cameron must have been fully aware of the implications of posing for the photograph.

While it's unlikely to have lost him any votes - it certainly won't be the Tory faithful carping away on Twitter - it shows a certain moral courage to ignore the critics and publicly embrace a tradition that has been so emphatically misinterpreted.

And a Prime Minister prepared to stand up to the offence-seeking mob and their ill-informed revisionist prejudice is a welcome sight to see.

So, just this once, David Cameron, your very good health!


*Regular readers may remember being subjected to a longer post containing which contains much rambling historical detail and comment.

One (more) night in Clacton

Dedicated to JuliaM, for inspiring me to resume work on this - an earworm shared is, it turns out, an earworm doubled.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9cNtrrCP0E

Clacton, Northern Essex setting,
And I think we all know what Westminster's getting;
The delectable sight of Carswell in the
Role of spectre at the Tory dinner.

Time flies, doesn't seem a minute
Since Nigel Farage said he’d help him win it;
All change, don't you know that when you
Piss off the electorate they turn against you?

In Eastleigh, Heywood and Middleton
Or Rochester or, or this place...

One night in Clacton and the world's his oyster;
Carswell got a mandate for the world to see.
He left your ship, now you can watch him hoist a
Purple skull and crossbones there beside the sea;
Cameron, here’s a taste of how it just could be.

One town may yet lead to another;
Are you really sure of those places, Brother?
It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pity
You Tories ignored the world outside the city.
What do you mean
'It's just one unimportant provincial town'?
Get out, walk in any street;
Ask some questions of the people that you meet.
You’ll find they’ll say it’s too late to restore the myth your motives are the purest;
No chance - expenses scuppered that line, Sunshine!

One night in Clacton and the Tories humbled;
Media portray despair and ecstasy.
One night in Clacton, now which seat will tumble
To Nigel Farage and his company?
I can feel that Devil walking next to me!

One night in Clacton

A busy week continues to keep me away from the blog but this seems a good time for an updated version of of this post from May 2013...

*****

This song was somehow inevitable, given the quasi-mythical status that the media seem to be attributing to this larger-than-life character.

With apologies to Stan Ridgway...

I was sitting in my local, feeling rather down;
I’d been drinking on my own since half past five.
It was visiting the polling station left me without hope
When I'd seen the parties hanging around outside.
I was looking for the courage to go back and see who'd won
And I sighed as I contemplated Britain’s fate;
Just then a chap in a fedora with a shocking purple tie
Appeared there at my shoulder and said "Wait."

 He offered me a pint and said "Don't worry, son, I'm here;
If Cameron wants to tangle now, he'll have me to dodge."
I said, "Well, thanks a lot!" I told him my name and asked him his
And he said to me "The name’s Nigel Farage".

'Oh, no, no, no!' said Farage;
'The English aren’t as docile as they seem;
Oh, no, no, no!' said Farage;
'Things are going to change now UKIP’s on the scene.'

Well, we talked all night, side by side, while the votes were counted in
And I wondered how the drastic shift began
'Cause now support for UKIP seemed to spring up everywhere
And I wondered if this was all Farage’s plan.
"They called us clowns and fruitcakes, but UKIP have the last laugh," he said,
"Perhaps the government now understand
That Britons may be tolerant but we’ll only take so much
Of the EU wanting to keep the upper hand -
Just let them try..."

And I knew this was somethin' we'd seen in Brussels,  'cause I remember how he was pullin' a metaphor right outta thin air and swattin' von Rompuy with it from here to kingdom come...

When the count was nearly over we shook hands and said goodbye;

He just winked at me from the door and then was gone.
When I got back to my family I told 'em about my night
And about the time I'd spent with Nigel Farage.
When I said his name, the others gulped and then they took my arm

And said to me, “That really can’t be right”,
And they pointed to the television; “There’s Nigel Farage
And he's been right there on News 24 all night!

(Feels like he's been there all week long...)"

 Well I know I must have imagined it – I’d been drinking like a fish –

Though as hallucinations go, it’s pretty large,

But it’s certain UKIP’s won a seat and it looks like they're here to stay,
And we’re all going to see much more of Nigel Farage.

(It's been drawn to my attention that iPads and phones don't always display the embedded videos; if you spent the mid-80s doing more worthwhile things than listening to the top 40 on a Sunday night - "No, honestly, I am doing my homework!" -  you can follow the 'Stan Ridgway' link to Youtube to hear the tune.)

Occupational hazard?

The Labour leader told the BBC he "did not deliberately" drop the passages on the deficit and immigration but his approach was to write a text in advance and use it as the basis for his speech - which meant things were added in and left out on the day. 

Well, he does have form in this area...

From December 2012:

'Labour insisted Mr Miliband ‘stands by’ the omitted section of his speech and had simply forgotten to say it. 

So what happened? Did he really forget about that bit or, looking round at his distinctly multicultural - sorry, vibrant - audience, did he decide that discretion was the better part of valour? "Look, it's great that you're all here, but it was, you know, a bit of a mistake letting you in".

Miliband admits he left out details which appeared in the published versions circulated to the faithful but believes that his 'style' works even at the expense of content:

"There are perils that come with that obviously but what people got a sense of yesterday was a plan to change our country."

That has the authentic ring of 21st-century politics; never mind the quality, feel the pitch. Either he is genuinely so disorganised that he can't follow notes or he is cynical enough to omit a potentially awkward element from a live speech while including it in the printed record.

Whichever is the real reason, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in his abilities as a leader.

********

Meanwhile, as the Labour conference draws to a close, I always like to remember that the writer of  their final song never meant his words to be set to the solemn and ponderous German tune of 'Tannenbaum', memorably described by George Bernard Shaw as 'a funeral march for a fried eel'.

He intended 'The Red Flag' to be sung to the altogether more sprightly melody of the Jacobite song 'The White Cockade', which, I think you'll agree, would have given a far more festive air to the closing ceremonies.

'The Harem Shuffle'

I can't lay claim to the title (though I wish I'd though of it first); it was an inspired comment at 'Underdogs Bite Upwards' which irresistibly led to the following...

(Image from Daily Mail)

(With apologies to Bob & Earl)

You move to the left,
Put Gove on the shelf.
You move to the right, 
Ken Clark’s out of sight.
Get those women; you know
They do well in the polls
Elections looming fast;
You can’t be last.

You'd sign up a monkey,
If it made you look cool;
With the old guard in limbo,
Your squad's good to go
So call all the papers
Tell them ‘look at me now!”
As you groove it right here
To the harem shuffle.

Update: (with thanks to Mark Wadsworth in comments) Or, if you prefer:

'Sorry' seems to be the hardest word

Well, she's gone. Or at least she's resigned from her Cabinet post; the good people of Basingstoke still have the dubious pleasure of being represented by Maria Miller, whether they like it or not (and some of them really don't - see these comments [H/T Wiggia at Nourishing Obscurity]).

It's quite understandable, given her message to them; there's more than a little ambivalence in 'I am devastated that this has happened...'

Now that there's less danger of becoming collateral damage, Peter Bottomley put his head above the parapet this morning to say in her defence that she had given an 'unreserved' apology.

Am I the only one thinking of this?

(Youtube link here)

Update: Mrs Miller receives Caedmon's Cat's signature treatment - well worth a visit!

'How do you solve a problem like Maria?'

Just when I though 'Expenses: the Musical' was distant history, along comes more inspiration in the form of the menacing Mrs Miller. Don't be fooled by the winning smile; she clearly knows where the bodies are buried.

Parliamentary commissioner Kathryn Hudson had found Mrs Miller over-claimed by £45,000 [half of the total amount she claimed] for expenses towards mortgage interest payments and council tax on a house which she shared with her parents. 

But the House of Commons Committee on Standards [in some cases, judgement by her peers indeed] decided she only needed to pay back £5,800 to cover over-claiming of mortgage expenses, resulting from her failure to cut her claims when interest rates fell.

As it happens, the media silence on the subject of MPs forgetting to alter their claims when mortgage interest rates went down was raised here in the Tavern back in May 2009, when Elliot Morley and David Chaytor - remember them? - admitted that they submitted their claims in annual bundles and had both overlooked the small matter of their mortgages having been paid off already.

Ms Miller's 'second home', on which she claimed almost right up to the maximum allowance of interest subsidy for several years, was mortgaged for £525,000, despite having been originally purchased for a mere £237,500. There is something very disturbing about a system that has allowed those whose decisions may profoundly influence the housing market to profit from price increases through effectively interest-free property loans.

The commissioner believed she should only have been able to claim expenses for interest payments on the original 1996 mortgage of £215,000. The committee, made up of MPs and lay members and which has the final say, disagreed. 

I feel this calls for a song...

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
Shouldn't this bring a cabinet minister down?
How should the voters view the way Maria
Borrowed against her residence in town?

Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her;
You have to admit it looks quite underhand,
To make the public pay
When you've mortgaged all the way
Then added on at least 300 grand.

Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
And MPs expenses getting out of hand?

Her answers were confused,
The committee was bemused
By her efforts to procrastinate and jam
The enquiries asking whether
She had fleeced us; altogether,
Its quite obvious she didn't give a damn.

She managed to invest
In a comfy London nest
And she moved her aged parents in as well,
While claiming all the while
Basingstoke was more her style;
The whole thing has a very nasty smell.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you stop her throwing her weight around?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
I can think of a few, but they all have an ugly sound!

Many a thing the voters want to tell her
Many a thing she ought to understand
But Cameron says she can stay
And the MPs have got their way
A swift apology and all's in hand.

Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you make her pay back forty grand?

'Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!'

It seems that optimism reigns supreme north of the Border, where Alex Salmond has apparently claimed that an independent Scotland would be an 'economic powerhouse':

The First Minister said Scotland would rebalance the “economic centre of gravity of these islands” by becoming a “Northern light” that would act as a counterpoint to London’s “dark star”.

Since, according to the Telegraph, experts have warned that the fledgling state would start life deep in the red and that he has massively overestimated oil revenues, you have to wonder where he is getting his figures.

Oddly enough, I have something in the archives from last year that might give some indication of what happens when politics and mathematics collide...

     ************

According to a decidedly excitable headline today at the Scottish Daily Record:

Margaret Thatcher snatched £130bn of Scottish wealth as she axed 250,000 of our jobs

Mrs Thatcher, it proclaims, 'reaped a massive Scottish tax windfall' and 'squandered North Sea oil cash on her destructive policies', which, I think, roughly translates as "Let's all share a highly enjoyable outburst of righteous indignation".

Having obligingly done so, the readers will have probably gone off the boil rather by the time they reach the explanation that:

Extra Scottish revenues handed to the UK Treasury during the Iron Lady’s 1980s heyday would be worth a staggering £130billion at today’s prices.

So the figure has been adjusted. Never mind the intervening quarter of a century and the misleading 'as' suggesting contemporaneous events; what matters is that the journalist has an attention-grabbing figure to crown a collection of loaded phrases straight out of the rabble-rouser's handbook.

But wait a minute; what's this?

Finance Secretary John Swinney claimed the figures proved that Scotland’s oil wealth had been wasted by the Thatcher government. 

He said: “The additional revenue paid by Scotland totalled £130billion during the 1980s – or an average of £2541 per person each and every year."

So which is it? £130 billion then or now? Oil revenues are a complicated question at the best of times but understanding can hardly be helped by such apparent political sleight-of-hand.

When it comes to political speeches, most people don't listen out for the metaphorical small print; they just join in when they like the tune. Look at the crowds of under-30s out on the streets celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher and you'll see exactly what I mean.

We've become so accustomed to misdirection from our political masters on both sides of the border that
 it hardly seem worth remarking these days, but a combination of disinformation and opportunistic demagoguery cannot but harm the democratic process.

The Scottish people deserve better than this.

The Sunday Songbook - UKIPpy-ki-yay

This song was somehow inevitable, given the quasi-mythical status that the media seem to be attributing to this larger-than-life character.

With apologies to Stan Ridgway...

I was sitting in my local, feeling rather down;
I’d been drinking on my own since half past five
It was visiting the polling station left me without hope
With the big three parties hanging around outside.
I was looking for the courage to go back and see who'd won
And I sighed as I contemplated Britain’s fate;
Just then a chap in a fedora, with a shocking purple tie
Appeared there at my shoulder and said "Wait."

He offered me a pint and said "Don't worry, son, I'm here;
If Cameron wants to tangle now, he'll have me to dodge"
I said, "Well, thanks a lot!" I told him my name and asked him his
And he said to me "The name’s Nigel Farage".

Oh, no, no, no! says Farage;
The English aren’t as docile as they seem;
Oh, no, no, no! says Farage;
Things are going to change now UKIP’s on the scene.


Well, we talked all night, side by side, while results came rolling in
And I wondered how the drastic shift began
'Cause the council seats for UKIP seemed to spring up everywhere
And I wondered if this was all Farage’s plan.
"They called us clowns and fruitcakes, but UKIP have the last laugh," he said,
"Perhaps the government now understand
That the British may be tolerant but we’ll only take so much
Of the EU wanting to keep the upper hand -
Just let them try..."


{spoken}
And I knew this was somethin' we'd seen in Brussels,
 'Cause I remember how,
He was pullin' a metaphor right outta thin air
And swattin' von Rompuy with it from here to kingdom come.

When the count finally ended, we shook hands and said goodbye
He just winked at me from the door and then was gone,
When I got back to my family I told 'em about my night
And I told them how I’d met Nigel Farage.
When I said his name, the others gulped and then they took my arm

And said to me, “That really can’t be right”,
And they pointed to the television; “There’s Nigel Farage
And he's been right there on News 24 all night

(Feels like he's been there all week long...)"

Well I know I must have imagined it – I’d been drinking like a fish –

Though as hallucinations go, it’s pretty large,

But it’s certain UKIP’s vote share came to 22%

And we’re all going to see much more of Nigel Farage.


(It's been drawn to my attention that iPads and phones don't always display the embedded videos; if you want to hear the tune, follow the 'Stan Ridgway' link to Youtube.)

That was then, this is now

According to a decidedly excitable headline today at the Scottish Daily Record*:

Margaret Thatcher snatched £130bn of Scottish wealth as she axed 250,000 of our jobs

Mrs Thatcher, it proclaims, 'reaped a massive Scottish tax windfall' and 'squandered North Sea oil cash on her destructive policies', which, I think, roughly translates as "Let's all share a highly enjoyable outburst of righteous indignation".

Having obligingly done so, the readers will have probably gone off the boil rather by the time they reach the explanation that:

Extra Scottish revenues handed to the UK Treasury during the Iron Lady’s 1980s heyday would be worth a staggering £130billion at today’s prices.

So the figure has been adjusted. Never mind the intervening quarter of a century and the misleading 'as' suggesting contemporaneous events; what matters is that the journalist has an attention-grabbing figure to crown a collection of loaded phrases straight out of the rabble-rouser's handbook.

But wait a minute; what's this?

Finance Secretary John Swinney claimed the figures proved that Scotland’s oil wealth had been wasted by the Thatcher government. 

He said: “The additional revenue paid by Scotland totalled £130billion during the 1980s".

So which is it? And what of the money that has travelled in the opposite direction before and since? Scots may have paid more per head, but don't they get free university tuition and elderly care now? Oil revenues are a complicated question at the best of times but understanding can hardly be helped by such apparent political sleight-of-hand.

When it comes to political speeches, most people don't listen out for the metaphorical small print; they just join in when they like the tune. Look at the crowds of under-30s out on the streets celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher and you'll see exactly what I mean.

We've become so accustomed to misdirection from our political masters on both sides of the border that
 it hardly seem worth remarking these days, but a combination of disinformation and opportunistic demagoguery cannot but harm the democratic process.

The Scottish people deserve better than this.


*Admittedly you can't judge a country by its tabloid press; the fact that the most read news story in today's online version is 'Doctors say looking at busty women for 10 minutes a day is good for your health' probably tells you more than you want to know about the readership.

De mortibus...

Back in the 1980s, I was walking along a leafy suburban street with a fellow-student when my companion suddenly turned and spat viciously into an unremarkable front garden, before continuing onward as if nothing had happened.

I was appalled - although I did not know him well, there was nothing about this polite ex-public schoolboy, son of a notable academic, to suggest such behaviour was likely. I asked him what on earth he thought he was doing.

"Tory party HQ", he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "The enemy stronghold".

Such was my introduction to the mentality that has spawned a thousand tasteless tweets since the death of Lady Thatcher. It never ceases to amaze me that a certain type of socialist can publicly vaunt his or her caring credentials and respect for mankind while at the same time heaping unwarranted and vicious personal abuse on the heads of political opponents.

Orwell, of course, had it perfectly summed-up with the concept of 'doublethink'; doubtless the left-wing politicians and comedians, who were still persisting with their tired and increasingly irrelevant anti-Thatcher jibes two decades after she left office, can see nothing inappropriate in publicly rejoicing at the death of an elderly grandmother.

I'm not advocating universal and unopposed hagiography, of course - we saw quite enough of that with the 'People's Princess' - but it saddens me to think that, while most of us can observe the decencies and respect the passing of another human being whether or not we agreed with her politics, some have clearly not yet attained that level of civilization.

One of the more depressing news stories described the cheers that greeted the announcement at the NUS conference. The vast majority of delegates were surely not even born when Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street  (unless, of course, the NUS is made up largely of mature students with a political axe to grind).

Hatred of 'Maggie Thatcher' has become a tenet of faith in certain circles; it trumps all common decency or manners to a disturbing extent. The crowds who celebrated her demise with a drunken looting spree in a Brixton charity shop may not have known any better but there is no excuse for the public figures who expressed themselves so tastelessly.

But, of course, the sentiments of George Galloway and the like were never really about Lady Thatcher; those tweets were attention-seeking of the highest order, competing to grab the headlines with the most egregious comments possible.

Still, crass and immature though it may be, there's no point in offence-seeking. I don't believe in an after-life but I'd like to think that if Lady Thatcher, restored to her full searing intellect, were reading those tweets now, she would be highly amused at the level to which her critics have sunk.


Update: if you haven't already done so, look in on Caedmon's Cat for a masterful and entertaining summing-up.

Now there's a surprise!

Rent arrears among tenants on a government pilot project that pays housing benefit directly to recipients have seen a big increase, figures show.

Perhaps it would have been helpful to have treated the officials concerned to a short talk on ursine lavatorial habits beforehand*. After all, it would take a Pollyanna-ish degree of optimism to assume that a population poorly educated in financial matters and systematically deprived by the state of virtually every opportunity to think for themselves would, without exception, have the skill to manage relatively large sums of money on a regular basis.

[The government] wants to pay recipients directly as they think it will increase their sense of responsibility over their own lives and make them better able to cope should they move into a job.

It's a spectacular example of putting the cart before the horse; since the implication here is that we are talking about the low-paid and unemployed, this argues that among their number will be some who are statistically more likely than the rest of the population to have difficulty with the concept of forward planning and numeracy. Those who haven't managed to develop a sense of responsibility by now are hardly likely to produce one spontaneously to order.

(There will now be a short pause for anyone trained in the knee-jerk rhetoric of the Left - as I once was - to point out that I am being unfair to the many responsible and numerate people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in need of housing benefit [insert your own apposite example here, preferably incorporating ethnic minorities, single parents and/or children with special needs]. OK; can we move on now?)

Given that we can expect a reasonable proportion of HB claimants to have the self-discipline and mathematical ability to allocate these payments correctly, it is surely a matter of concern that the rates of default are so high:

Figures obtained by BBC News show that arrears among tenants of Wakefield and District Housing in West Yorkshire have increased from an average of 2% to 11% on the pilot projects. 

Bron Afon community housing in south Wales said it had seen a 50% increase in arrears, while pilot projects in Edinburgh, Oxford and Southwark are showing around 30% increases in arrears.

This suggests that, while some will manage the new system with ease, a number of those with less ability to cope will spend the money elsewhere (though it should be observed that the original default rates in the latter two areas are not given). Doubtless much of this expenditure is essential - we are, after all, talking about people unlikely to have any financial buffers for emergencies - but human nature tells us some will regard the cash as an opportunity to indulge themselves and their children.

The BBC struggles valiantly to present this story in the approved fashion with the example of a single mother who used some of her HB to pay her utility bills, but her own statement sounds rather more ambiguous:

"By them paying the money directly to me it created temptation to use it for other things which has resulted in me being in arrears and possibly being evicted. "

She doesn't say what those 'other things are', though I'm not sure that someone would describe paying the gas bill as a 'temptation'; it doesn't sound quite right, somehow. And even if the BBC's token recipient really was selflessly robbing Peter to pay Paul, it's worth noting that the modern-day Newgate that is my local town boasts a vast population on benefits as well as a burgeoning array of tattoo and tanning parlours and nail bars, all of which seem to be doing a roaring trade.

Pavlov's Cat has supporting evidence of a link from his days in the jobcentre front line, and, of course, there is this post, in which I manage to upset someone of a liberal persuasion. I don't have an answer for this - having seen it at first hand in a housing benefit department, I know there is urgent need to deal with unscrupulous and greedy landlords pocketing a fortune in benefit payments. However, if the tenant is to be given the financial upper hand, some safeguards should be put in place for those who cannot cope with the responsibility.

Meanwhile, since predictability is the order of the day, there is really one only one more thing left to say:

The government says lessons will be learned from the pilot projects.

*Though, as with so many other government policies that end in disaster, it's worth bearing in mind that this initiative is largely being implemented by staff recruited under and in favour of the previous administration.

It's an ill wind...

What a week it's been for Jonathan Aitken!

The prospect of Chris Huhne's imminent incarceration has sent Fleet Street scrambling for first-hand accounts of what it's like to exchange the palatial surroundings of Westminster for accommodation at her Majesty's pleasure.

The expenses scandal has not left them exactly short of suitably qualified pundits, but Aitken has clearly learnt a thing or two about PR since his fall from grace - either that or he has a damn' good agent - and has secured virtually every gig in town.

From the tabloids to the Today programme, he has been popping up on all sides to offer the hapless Huhne avuncular advice along with accounts of what to expect, delivered in varying degrees of lurid detail depending on the nature of the publication.

There's nothing like a spot of ubiquity to send suspicious souls looking for the real cause - decades of 'chat show' guests touting their wares or carefully contrived news stories that 'just happen' to coincide with a book launch or film have left the viewing public decidedly cynical, and with good reason.

Jonathan Aitken will be the star turn at Annabel’s nightclub next week when he hosts an “interlude by the Belmarsh Trio” at the launch of Banham Concierge, an advisory service started by the security firm. 

The former Cabinet minister will interview two of his chums from prison in south-east London, Noel “Razor” Smith, author and assistant editor of Inside Time, the newspaper for prisoners, and Leroy Skeete, who has been mentored by Aitken since he came out of jail.

Aitken's agent must be doubtless rubbing his hands with glee at the whole Huhne-Pryce affair, watching happily as the PR opportunity of a lifetime falls into his hands with impeccable timing.

And if we wished for proof that Aitken has now reached the point at which a celebrity's most trivial doings and tenuous connections supposedly become a matter for public interest, the Telegraph today supplies it in this report on the discovery of a body in a London flat:

Jonathan Aitken shocked by a murder in Mayfair
Jonathan Aitken, the former Cabinet minister, has spoken of his shock at the murder of Roberto Troyan, the boyfriend of his former interior designer.

You know you've finally made it in media circles when there's been a murder and you manage to upstage the corpse.

The Silence of the Lembit

Of all the people you might have expected to comment on the recent congestion in our cosmic neighbourhood - DA14, the Russian fireball, 2013 EC and ET  and the two smaller asteroids this weekend, plus a couple of comets coming up for good measure - Lembit Opik should surely have been high on the list.

After all, back in the late 90s, he was calling for the government to invest in asteroid detection systems and being described as 'The Nostradamus of Westminster' for his pains. Of course, young Lembit had a head start on the rest of us, being the grandson of astronomer Ernst Opik, a pioneer in the field who had the distinction of an asteroid named after him.

But now the general population is catching up and starting to get worried, what has Lembit Opik to say on the subject of the recent cosmic near-misses? Well, not very much, it appears; his mind is occupied with the rather more earthly body - or rather, brain - of Chris Huhne.

Having reinvented himself in grand style on several occasions - from politician to showbiz Lothario to stand-up comedian - Opik now appears to have entered the realms of psychoanalysis with his explanation of how things went wrong.

Intelligent, hard-working and very precise in his thinking, Chris displays ‘left brain dominance’ to a fault. 

This makes his style of interaction a weak link, and as a result he has made needless foes.

Well, it can't have helped, but I'm not sure it was his left brain Huhne was thinking with when he decided to abandon his formidable wife for another woman, setting in motion the epic revenge drama that has played itself out through the courts - though perhaps Opik might prefer to gloss over that particular aspect of the case.

It's certainly been a riveting story - and I admit I've put in my tangential pennyworth along with everyone else - but I can't be the only one wondering about Lembit Opik's resounding silence on the subject of celestial encounters while exploring the mental processes of a fellow-politician.

It's sad when a man starts out reaching for the stars and ends up with a handful of mud.