Turning the Screw

Remember Morton’s Fork; political chicanery, fifteenth-century style, from Henry VII’s Chancellor - “You’re spending lavishly so you can clearly afford to pay more tax to the King” or, “You’re spending next to nothing so you can clearly afford… etc.”? Our modern-day equivalent, for the nearly-poor over 65s at least, is Reeves’ Ratchet Reversal. 

It goes something like this: 

• The cost of living rises and finances are tight, then the pension goes up to match and you can balance the books once more. 

• The cost of living rises further, the pension rises again to match. 

• The cost of living rises yet further but, at this point, Reeves steps in: “You have a pension increase due soon, so you clearly don’t need any help with your heating costs: no WFA for you this year!

 …at which point the whole process grinds to a shuddering halt as cold weather approaches and, with it, some of the highest household energy costs in the world; all well and good if you are reasonably well-off or had plenty of warning to prepare for the loss of the expected payment, less so if you are living on £221.20 a week and it is sprung on you after the nights have already started drawing in.

Never mind that the Chancellor of the Exchequer appears to be effectively double-counting (which is not reassuring!) and that the higher pension rate was calculated based on other increases in the cost of living already in effect or, for that matter, that the ‘shopping basket’ used to calculate CPI contains many things pensioners wouldn’t necessarily want or need and their real-terms percentage increase may be higher; theirs are the broad shoulders to be burdened with the Herculean tasks of filling the black hole in the public purse, saving the NHS and preventing a run on the pound. 

It’s a poor return for the elderly without private or company pensions who have paid a working lifetime’s worth of NI in the firm belief (backed, for some, by government assurances) that the government would look after them with dignity in their old age or the women who, more than half a century ago, were expected to give up work to raise their families. While the Left bandy about the oft-repeated - and irrelevant - fallacy that a quarter of pensioners are millionaires, some two million people receive nothing but the state pension; too much now to qualify for the WFA but little enough for the loss of an expected £200 to be a significant blow.

La Niña is predicted to bring us a cold start to the winter with strong northerly winds and and possible early snowfall, so, before long, those clever little display units sitting on shelves up and down the country, intended to placate the environmental lobby by making consumers aware of their energy consumption, will become a constant source of anxiety to the impoverished elderly as they show the pounds and pence of fuel debt inexorably clocking up minute by minute. 

A report commissioned by Labour* a few years ago produced an estimated figure of 3870 extra deaths if the payment were limited to those on pension credit. While it is to be hoped that families, charities and the wider community will do what they can for those in need - though it’s shocking that this should be necessary in a supposedly civilised country - many lone and isolated individuals will still slip through the net, spending their last days in fear and despair before finally succumbing to the cold. 

With winter fast approaching, it won’t be long before our hospitals (and morgues) start to deal with the consequences of pensioners afraid to turn on their central heating. The government will doubtless disclaim all responsibility and say it is a matter of choice - after all, who, in today’s easy credit society, would understand an older generation’s visceral aversion to going into debt? - but it remains to be seen what the effect on the public will be once the deaths start mounting up.

 

According to a contemporary chronicler, Morton ‘lyved not withoute the greate Disdayne and greate Haterede of the Commons of thys Lande’; from the evidence of the past few months, Reeves looks very much on course to be doing the same.

*from the Resolution Foundation under its then CEO Torsten Bell; he is now a Labour MP and PPS to the Cabinet office, so presumably the party still stands by its findings.

“You scratch my friend’s back…”

Typical! You wait ages for a story about a Baroness and then two come along (almost) at once. This time, it’s Baroness Uddin, whose brazen request to be reinstated to the Lords so she could use the daily allowance to repay the wrongful expense claims for which she was suspended in the first place caused much amusement twelve years ago - has it really been that long? - and who was finally bailed out by four benefactors to the tune of £124,000.

Two of those donors represented the Islam Channel, a TV station with some rather dubious history and possible connections, and a third, it now turns out, was none other than Lord Alli, the Cabinet’s Universal Provider of Good Things and furnisher of designer duds and luxury accommodation to the Starmer ménage; he and the Baroness go back a long way, having both been elevated to the peerage (as Blair creations) on the same day back in 1998 and, by 2012, were clearly on “Here’s £62,000 to tide you over” terms.

Of course, it may simply have been that Lord Alli and the others couldn’t bear the sight of Baroness Uddin’s sad little face when the stern Lords of the Committee locked her out of Parliament but, given the amounts of money concerned, a cynic could surely be forgiven for looking at the fingers she has in various diplomatic and international pies and asking some awkward questions.

Fortunately for the Baroness, Keir Starmer as DPP, ruled ‘after careful scrutiny of the evidence’, that there was no criminal case to answer - despite the testimony of neighbours, household bills, Baroness Uddin’s own Facebook account, the electoral register and even her own husband and family that her claims were fraudulent - because ‘a senior parliamentary official ruled that a peer's "main house" might be a place they visit only once a month’ (presumably dating back to the time when being Lord So-and-so of Somewhere meant having a country seat with all the associated hereditary obligations).

Leaving aside that, by that definition, I could claim to be permanently resident in the compost heap at the bottom of my garden, it all seems a little odd; it could be entirely coincidental that a close associate of Lord Alli’s was once let off a serious legal hook and restored to the political stage by Starmer on a technicality of startling flimsiness but, in the light of the nature and magnitude of the subsequent personal freebies received from Lord Alli by the former DPP, surely we are now entitled to ask whether it’s not merely a case of quid pro quo but also quid ante quo.

In the light of past posts, it seems only fitting to finish with a reprise from ‘Expenses - the Musical’ (with apologies to the late, great Freddie Mercury)

She keeps a home down in Wapping,

Where subsidies help pay the rent,

A mansion in Bangladesh,

And don’t forget the flat in Kent,

Pressed for a remedy, she says she’s in penury, 

But once she’s back in Westminster then all will be fine;

Three hundred quid a day she’ll get,

She’ll use your cash to pay her debt

Extraordinarily nice!

She's Manzila Uddin, 

Baroness of Bethnal Green,

House of Lords expenses queen; 

Her arrant greed will blow your mind.

Lady Gone Red

It’s a time-honoured novel and film plot device; the girl who seems like a friend at first but gradually starts emulating another’s behaviour, clothes and jewellery and eventually hairstyle and colour, at which point things inevitably start to get creepy/violent depending on the genre.

What, then, are we to make of Rachel Reeves makeover?* Gone is the stern dark bob of her WFA announcement and conference speech and, in its place, she now sports a straightened hairdo in a shade of red all too familiar to those opposite the Front Bench, accessorised with bright red outfits and chunky gold hoop earrings.

What’s next; 4am clubbing in Ibiza? Pints of venom and multi-packs of vapes? At the very least, this is what happens when a quiet, studious fifth-former - the one who plays the violin and always hands her work in on time - suddenly falls under the spell of the class Queen Bee and starts to draw ink tattoos on her hands and wear black nail varnish.

For a nation facing an uncertain economic future, a Prime Minister who should, perhaps, have picked his friends more carefully and conflict in the Middle East, Reeves cosplaying Rayner is all a bit too ‘Gone Girl’, ‘Single White Female’ etc. for comfort - at least for those of us who’d like some sane grown-ups in charge for once.

* A clue to the reason might be found in the sudden popularity of this clip after she announced the cut to the Winter Fuel Allowance…

Hell and high water

In between 4am clubbing in Ibiza and posing for her official Praise Singer - sorry, ‘Chief Photographer to the Deputy PM and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’ - Angela Rayner has been busy launching an independent New Towns Taskforce, presumably aimed at recreating the picturesque architectural charms of Basildon or Stevenage New Town.

In the race to identify suitable sites for the ‘hundreds of thousands’ of new homes to be built in the next few years, a clear front-runner seems to be emerging in the shape of Tempsford, currently a village of some 600 inhabitants, which sits at the junction of major North-South and East-West road and (potentially) rail routes.

The site has already caught the eye of a developer, who has acquired the option to build 7,000 homes, while a think tank has argued that Tempsford should become a major city with homes for up to 350,000 people. All this would seem pleasantly logical in the abstract - unless, of course, you are a resident of this serene and pleasant village - but all is not quite as rosy as it seems.

As it happens, this used to be familiar ground to me; my grandparents lived nearby and, as a child, I often visited family friends on their riverside smallholding a few miles away, where the Great Ouse bursting its banks was a regular and spectacular occurrence - ensuring that the goats were safely penned up out of harm’s way was one of my favourite tasks when the river was high (the house and barn, which dated back to Tudor times, were perched on a 20ft rise above the normal river level - our ancestors weren’t stupid).

Technology has moved on since those days and it is now possible, from the comfort of one’s armchair many miles away, to get an idea of how things are going at the confluence of the Ivel and the Great Ouse. While the government flood warning map below represents the worst-case scenario, it gives a pretty good idea of the extent of the potential hazard even when most of the surrounding land is water-retaining fields and woodland rather than acres of tarmac and concrete.

I hope those 350,000 future residents can swim.

‘Appropriate’ payments…

 …no, not those ones - yet - but an old story revisited. This time it’s Baroness Warsi, who has just announced her resignation:

“My decision is a reflection of how far Right my party has moved and the hypocrisy and double standards in its treatment of different communities. I will not be gagged on a point of principle.”

How noble and high-minded! And nothing, of course, to do with the Party’s planned enquiry into her cryptic social media post in apparent support of the protester whose banner bore a caricature of Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts or, for that matter, her forthcoming book ‘Muslims Don’t Matter’.

Prompted by her lofty mention of principle, a post from the archives came to mind:

"In the early part of 2008, for a short period, Baroness Warsi stayed with me," said Mr Khan, who later became her special adviser.

"I confirm she made a financial payment on each occasion, which compensated for the inconvenience caused and additional costs incurred by me as a result of her being there." 

According to her subsequent expenses claim, the Baroness compensated Mr Khan with ‘appropriate’ payments equivalent to the cost of a hotel, which raises some awkward questions about the nature of their relationship, to say the least. 

We certainly know it was not to help with his rent - he was, at the time, lodging rent-free thanks to the generosity (and possibly the political aspirations) of his host, Wafik Moustafa, who said he gave the Baroness lifts to and from work and took her out for meals but never received any contribution from either of his house guests towards household bills or expenses.

All of which leaves the reader wondering exactly what ‘inconvenience’ the lady could have caused to clock up compensation somewhere north of £100 a night - or what services Mr Khan could have rendered to justify the payments (at public expense) - and why the admirably hospitable Dr Moustafa was left out of the equation altogether.

Sadly, the expenses enquiry had many other fish to fry and left it at that, but it would have been interesting to the public, if not exactly in the public interest, to know.

(As an aside, the Tavern’s Wise Woman has pointed out (thanks, Mum!) that, since both Sunak and Braverman are of Hindu heritage and her powerful polemic on Islamophobia is about to hit the shelves - 'Burns with righteous anger. An urgent read for our times’: Riz Ahmed - the Baroness apparently endorsing a racist caricature of the pair becomes more than a little problematic.)

“Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me…”

Want a pair of glasses

Or a new designer shawl?

And is last year’s summer wardrobe 

Now fitting rather small?

There’s Lord Alli:

Why not give him a call?

And if you’re in New York for New Year’s

And you want to have a ball,

Well, there’s a penthouse in Manhattan

Won’t cost you anything at all;

Lord Alli 

Will settle it all.

When your son’s busy revising

And needs a quiet place to go,

Or you need a designer number

For the Fashion Week front row

Go ask Alli,

I think he’ll know

There’s a flat in Covent Garden 

Where you rest your weary head 

But shouldn’t you be asking

What its owner wants instead?

You’ve entered where angels, full of dread,

Fear to tread.

The Party’s Over

As the Labour Party conference draws to a close, it’s almost time for the faithful to unite in the traditional song. 

This is the conference that brought us unprecedented levels of sophistry and doublethink (Rachel Reeves, we’re looking at you), a vote against a key government policy by the rank and file and, of course, Keir Starmer’s tribute to ‘1066 And All That’ - ‘for sausage read hostage’ - a slip so crass and unpleasant in the context that it surely warranted a subsequent apology rather than a quick correction and then effectively ‘move on, nothing to see here’. 

(Would he have made the same kind of slip speaking of George Floyd or BLM, I wonder - “Black puddings…er, lives matter!” - and if so, would he have ignored it and continued with no apology? It beggars belief that this man actually trained - and apparently succeeded - as a barrister!)*

Anyway, things have clearly changed in the old Independent Labour Party since the days of the original Keir and his trusty cloth cap - I wonder what Hardie would have made of the designer clothes, penthouse apartments and pop concerts, or, indeed, of the fact that they came courtesy of a millionaire donor. 

The rot that set in under Blair (and Cherie - millionaire-chaser extraordinaire) has clearly been spreading beneath the surface ever since and the party really ought to consider a change of name to reflect its new priorities; suggestions would be welcome.

Meanwhile, perhaps it’s time for some new words: 

The People's flag is deepest red, 

But now its staunchest sons are dead 

And in their place a man who’s sold 

His own integrity for gold. 

He’s willing to evade and lie, 

Accept the gifts and not ask why.

So do us all a favour, Keir,

And stop the grift and lying here.

*Alternatively, a cynic might consider the possibility of a deliberate  - and largely successful - ploy to generate ridicule and divert attention away from the matter of the hostages and Labour’s policy towards Israel, even at the cost of the leader’s dignity.

Or perhaps the cynicism is on Labour’s part; it might be significant that the mid-phrase error effectively negated its value  as a soundbite expressing clear support for Israel.

What lies beneath

In the high and far off times, when Angela Rayner thought Stockport so good she lived there twice, a strikingly similar scenario was playing out down south: 

A senior aide to Jeremy Corbyn has hit back after allegations that he is engaging in electoral fraud.

Our hero is one Sam Tarry, erstwhile paramour of Ms Rayner and undeclared house guest in Lord Alli’s New York penthouse flat during Our Ange’s surprisingly inexpensive New Year’s Eve break, and there’s something oddly familiar about his unconventional domestic arrangements a decade ago…

The Sunday Times alleged that, while Tarry says he lives in a flat in Barking [where he serves as a councillor], he actually lives in Brighton with his wife. The Brighton address is on their marriage certificate and Land Registry records show that Tarry and his wife jointly own the property.

Tarry’s claim to have been permanently resident in Barking for most of the duration of his marriage seems a bit rough on his wife - and, for that matter, on the two children they somehow managed to produce under the circumstances before he bunked off with Angie a few years later. In any case, it all sounds as if it might have been a bit cramped at the Essex end of things:

The newspaper also reported that a trade union official, named Elly Baker, lived at the Barking flat. Tarry’s lawyers said she was his lodger. 

It’s all more than a little reminiscent of Angela and her brother/lodger supposedly enjoying domestic bliss two miles down the road from her husband and young children. So what might connect two people (three if you count Mr Rayner) extracting the maximum benefit - political or financial - from declaring distinctly odd living arrangements despite the contrary paperwork and anecdotal evidence of their neighbours? 

There may be a clue in the fact that all three are former trade union officials and thus, especially in matters relating to finance or public life, likely to have sought advice from union lawyers - certainly Tarry and Rayner’s confident public denials of wrongdoing suggest a complacent certainty of being covered by a technicality.

Sound familiar? This is the Party whose leaders have, in recent weeks, made deliberately misleading statements - ‘I didn’t go to New York with anyone’ and ‘There isn’t a document on my desk’ - perfect examples of sophistry by being economical with the truth*. I suspect that, this time round, Labour’s spin doctors have been joined by a hidden crew of lawyers ready to advise on loopholes, technicalities and sneaky evasions all, of course, for the greater good; as every Socialist knows, the end justifies the means.

I have a horrible feeling we are going to be seeing much, much more of this in the future

(Expanded from an exchange of comments at AK Haart’s place)

*A fitting coda from Starmer in a recorded interview broadcast this morning:

“Well, look, there was no breach of the rules or anything like that. We complied with everything.”

Also, from Guido Fawkes:

Starmer’s team have made changes to the register this year following “advice” sought from authorities. They said they “believed we had been compliant, however, following further interrogation this month, we have declared further items.”

A Fairytale of New York (and elsewhere)

I thought I’d closed the Tavern doors for good but sometimes the Muse strikes and resistance is futile.

(With apologies to fans of the original…)

“It’s New Year’s Eve, babe, 

In a Manhattan flat

Lord Alli’s lent me, so why not come along?

He says it isn’t wrong;

‘Just put the figures through

Two-fifty a night we’ll say, Ange, just ‘cos it’s you.’

Aren’t we the lucky ones?

We’ll never lack for funds

As long as Lord Alli is here for me and you,

So here’s to freebies

New York holidays,

The best designers; he’ll make our dreams come true.

We’ve fine jackets and scarves

When the weather gets cold;

Who cares about WFA for the old?

We can sit in the front row 

Among VIPs,

And then claim it’s self-sacrifice rather than sleaze.”

“It’s our cultural duty!

Go see Taylor’s booty,

Take the kids to the footie - the donors will pay.

Give Downing Street passes

In exchange for free glasses

Then cover our arses and go on our way.”

But suddenly the voters know

And say it’s not fair play;

Will they rat each other out to get away?

“You're a leech!” “You're a skunk!”

“Were you clueless or drunk

That you never once said ‘All this might be misread’?”

“You scumbag! “You maggot!

If you want it you’ll blag it,

Kiss a millionaire’s arse to come up with the brass.”

Or, though people hate hypocrisy 

And wish they’d go away,

Will they keep on selling out day after day?

‘All of Them Witches’

It’s probably a good thing I never went into business on a grand scale as, yet again, I appear to have been overestimating the intelligence of the American public.

A K Hart’s recent thought-provoking post on the resurgence of myths in modern society touches on a theme which has made several appearances here in the past few weeks: 

Myths facilitate mass assimilation where technical explanations do not. Myths provide simpler and more widely accessible ways to guard against surprises, just as belief in witchcraft did. Burn the witch and if that doesn’t work there must be another one lurking somewhere.

The parallels between today’s Western society and the witch hunts of the past are increasingly inescapable; a preoccupation with conformity to a set of puritanical standards and a willingness to condemn and punish those who violate the norms imposed by fanatical believers are, sadly, with us again, this time with social media pouring oil on the flames, not least by encouraging the resurgence of the idea that, whatever goes wrong, someone, somewhere must be to blame.

Some weeks ago, I mentioned a competitor on ‘Masterchef’ who produced a witch-themed dish, inspired by an American movie, to ‘take the judges back to seventeenth-century Salem’. At the time, it baffled me since it was surely common knowledge that there were no witches there; just a group of unfortunate townsfolk (including a four-year-old child) who, for a number of reasons, found themselves falsely accused by a group of young girls supported by fervent religious fanatics.

As anyone who has experience in dealing with teenage girls en masse could tell you, it is highly plausible that a mixture of mass hysteria, religious indoctrination and groupthink led to this terrible situation, particularly if some of those concerned had eaten rye bread contaminated with ergot, now known to cause convulsions, itching, parathesia and psychosis. Add in the petty disputes and prejudices of a small town and potential for settling old scores and you have a situation where the false accusations would be readily accepted by the authorities.

It would appear, however, that such a rational approach is beyond many; while researching a previous post, I read that a substantial proportion of the million or so tourists who visit Salem every year apparently come for the ‘spooky’ atmosphere and the association with ‘real’ witches. Thanks mainly to film and television - not to mention Young Adult fiction - people are flocking to ‘Witch City’* and they are unlikely to be disappointed; the town is bursting with witch-themed attractions and entertainments. 

It would be tempting to regard this as merely a celebration of fiction - much like the hordes of Goths who descend on Whitby in tribute to Bram Stoker’s most famous novel -  but these tourists are visiting the scene of real-life events; to embrace the witch narrative is, subconsciously, to endorse the activities of those responsible for the trials and executions, a worrying attitude in a country where, in a recent online poll, 21% of respondents claimed to believe in the existence of witchcraft and black magic.

It is, I suppose, evidence of the growing appeal of superstition described by AK Haart and a frightening indicator of the public willingness to disregard rational explanations - and, in this case, the judicial murder of twenty people and the imprisonment of many more. In a culture where student essays defend Abigail Williams in ‘The Crucible’, it’s hard not to believe that the recent shift towards equating victimhood with credibility and a growing demand that those dissenting from current orthodoxy should ‘correct their thinking’ risk creating perfect conditions for a new generation of witchfinders.

 *It is rather fitting, somehow, that they are celebrating their history-that-never-was in the wrong place; most of the trials and executions took place in Salem Village, a separate settlement, five miles away from Salem Town and now known as Danvers.

 

Sweet Counterblast

One of the notable features of the small town where I grew up was the local soft drinks factory. Thanks in part to the Temperance movement, many small towns in Scotland and Wales had independent producers  and ours was a gem. Tucked away in a cobbled side street in an old stone building, it had a small and spartan shop - just a table and a few shelves of bottles - where you brought your wooden crate of empties to replace them with full bottles of lemonade or swapped your finished soda syphon for a fresh one.

Half a century on, the local factory is long gone and, in the supermarket which now stands on the site, the shelves groan under the weight of soda cans and two-litre plastic bottles, but more has been lost than the parochial simplicity and the clink of glass. Thanks to the sugar tax, it is now frustratingly difficult to find lemonade or other fizzy drinks in which the only sweetness comes from natural sugars. For all the outward show of choice - a bewildering variety of flavours where we once swithered between lemonade, orangeade or cream soda - the options are few and far between for the shopper who wants to avoid artificial sweeteners.

The result of this, according to various smug reports, has been a reduction in childhood obesity, although one might argue that it is impossible to ascertain the exact effect in such a complicated area and numerous studies suggest that, in the long term, regular consumption of artificial sweeteners has been linked to health problems including weight gain. The NHS has jumped firmly (and predictably) on the bandwagon, advocating the selection of ‘lower sugar’ and ‘lower fat’ snacks, desserts and drinks where possible*.

It’s a classic ‘nudge’ situation, using price, availability and persuasion to change consumers’ behaviour, with a hefty dose of Nanny-knows-best thrown in, but the vast increase in what we in the Tavern refer to as SOSS (Sod Off Sans Sugar) and FOFF (Fuck Off Fat-Free) products is drastically reducing the choice available for those who prefer their food and drink to be free from lab-manufactured additives (or to avoid the bitter aftertaste of artificial sweeteners).

While larger companies have generally gone down the route of using artificial sweeteners rather than passing on the tax to customers in the form of higher prices, one avenue still remains open for those trying to avoid them; at present, small producers whose annual fizzy drink output is less than a million litres a year are exempt from the sugar tax. Their products tend to be found only in local bars or farm and village shops but they represent a tradition well worth preserving as well as a pleasing way to exercise individual choice and fight back against the nudge and I urge you to seek them out where possible.

*Its ‘healthy living’ web page recommends replacing chocolate (ingredients, at least before the ‘nudgers’ got there with the vegetable fats and emulsifiers: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla) with ‘a lower calorie hot instant chocolate drink’ (ingredients: Whey Powder, Fat Reduced Cocoa Powder, Skimmed Cows' Milk Powder, Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Coconut Oil, Polydextrose, Thickener:Guar Gum, Carrageenan:, Salt, Maltodextrin, Milk Protein Concentrate, Flavouring, Sweetener:Sucralose:, Anti-caking Agent:Silicon Dioxide:, Stabiliser:Potassium Phosphate.)