Laughing at the present/Thinking about the future

MIND OVER CHATTER ARCHIVE

The Correct procedure

Last weekend, we may have seen the clearest example yet of how misguided our culture is. Hopefully, it might act as some kind of turning point in the gradual shift from The Lost Plot to a society able at last to find itself.

I refer to the case of Jordon Lyon, a ten year-old boy who drowned in a local lake. He was, at the time, helping his stepsister who had got into difficulties. Why am I telling any of you this - you know the grisly details as well as I do. However - as befits the title and traditions of this column - I want to take a rather different perspective from that of most of the weekend media.

I will start with Kay Burley. Ms Burley anchors the Sky 12-2.oo pm daily slot, called Lunchtime News with Kay Burley. This woman brings nothing to the programme in the way of opinion, journalistic analysis, or indeed anything that adds value beyond expensive hairdressing. The names Walter Cronkite, Ed Murrow and Richard Dimbleby would (I must assume) be unknown to her.

Kay Burley gained an 'exclusive' interview with Jordon's parents, Anthony (stepdad) and Tracy. (I say she did, but in all probability some other drone did the groundwork.) During this major event, she put enquiries of quite stunning insensitivity - not, I hasten to add, by travelling North, but from her podium of power in the Sky studio. This included asking Mrs Ganderton why - with suspicious undertone - she hadn't been with her son at the time, a groundless accusation that reduced the mourning mother to tears. (She had been looking after a neighbour's child). After Mrs Ganderton's collapse had been unsuitably observed in extreme close-up, the haughty Burley said she would "turn to Mr Ganderton while your wife composes herself".

The marvellous 1980s film Network remains the best and most wickedly funny destruction of modern television news coverage. Ms Burley is - down to the last pin-stripe in her chastity-suit - a Scarfe cartoon of the caricature created by Faye Dunaway in that film. Again, I feel sure she has not the slightest awareness of this.

Next, the parents themselves. Near catatonic with shock after attending a traumatic hearing, it was clear that at the best of times these two folks are not the sharpest cards in the pack. Very clear, however, was how an appalling personal disaster had made them painfully aware of exactly how badly our police forces - and their 'ancillary' units - have lost the plot. "S'just not right is it?" the husband kept asking.

But what, exactly, is Just Not Right?

In beginning to answer this desolate question from a man who isn't even the boy's natural father, let's move on to the following day, when an interesting, intelligent report about the tragedy's hearing was rudely interrupted as BBC24's duty anchorman said "I have to stop you there Aswan (or whoever) because we're going over live right now to the Labour conference".

At the Labour conference, the Big News was that Gordon Brown's limo had arrived at the venue. "Yes" began the anchorman, "there's the Prime Minister getting out of the car, followed closely by his wife who is wearing...yes, it's a red dress".

So perhaps the first thing Just Not Right is that a right now live gawp at Mrs Brown's red dress is deemed more important and interesting than a good journalist analysing the sad death of a boy with but a decade of life behind him.

The torrent of Just Not Right that flows from here onwards is busy drowning our civilisation.

Odd as it may seem to some, by far the worst part of this episode is the decision of the Auxiliary Officers involved not to turn up to the inquest. I find it hard to call this anything other than a disgraceful act of unthinking cowardice.

Close behind is DCI Philip Owen's statement to the press. The man who heads up Wigan police's detection division told us that "these officers are not trained to the same extent as police officers.....they wouldn't know how to deal with a situation like this".

How many ways can one interrogate this silly observation? What exactly are these officers trained to do? Are they trained as human beings who witness mortal danger and thus decide to pitch in? Are they required to be able to swim? (Astonishingly, the answer is 'no'). Are DCIs required to have an iota of common sense?

Next up for judgement must be Legacy Man and his chump Charles Clarke, who tried to stem a high tide of crime by quickly hiring lots of people with no calling beyond their desire to be in a uniform.

Finally, we are surely entitled to ask how it is that a ten year-old boy who sees his step-sister in danger knows exactly what do do, but two adults with the word 'police' in their job titles don't.

Patronising as it may seem, I am enormously encouraged by this boy who, in a world full of step this and extended that, knew enough from his various parents to risk his life for another. Also I am warmed by the degree to which those with whom I've discussed this case feel (as I do) that while Jordon's death was tragic, it has not been in vain: one day soon perhaps - in the future world of computelly interaction - police officers will not be able to spout party-line crap without sixty million citizens shouting 'bollocks' in unison. While to some the internet offers the potential for tyranny, I prefer to hope that it will force humbug back down the throats of those who utter it.

To those who ask with boring frequency why my bombardment upon the antipodean gangster Murdoch knows no end, I can only respond by saying that Murdochs produce Burleys. To those who see celebrity obsession as harmless, I ask if they can read this piece and still say that.

As to the officers concerned, I may seem to judge them, but we mustn't. In 2007, it has become a crime to tell the truth: "I was scared. I funked it". Courage to me is doing something of which one is deeply afraid. For all I know, the two auxiliary community officers were ordered by their superiors not to turn up at the inquest. Perhaps one day they will have the courage to fess up to their cowardice. Perhaps even their senior officers might do the same. (23.9.07)

THE ONLY THING BROWN HAS TO FEAR IS HIMSELF

Most of us call things wrongly with disturbing frequency, and I'm no different. Having said consistently that the Prime Minister lacks the self-belief to call a snap election (he has, after all, seen four opinion polls - all assuring him of an easy win - and still not decided) I'm beginning to wonder if even he can genuinely brood and agonise over what looks increasingly like a walkover.

The fact is, I rather fancy Gordon Brown is now being predictably ruthless about the issue. With the Conservatives all over the place - and Cameron facing a conference distracted by his falling popularity and the likelihood of a November election - the PM is very likely to make the announcement straight after what will be aTory bunfight. (But - Brown being Brown - another poll study next week showing a resurgent Boy David would send the New Labour leader back up to his office for more nailbiting inaction).

Having thought Brown would never get the job (and probably mess it up if he did) you may wonder why my overall judgement of him hasn't changed - given that he is now Prime Minister, and has made what most observers see as an excellent start. So perhaps I should explain why, if anything, his actions since coming to power have only firmed up my judgement of the man. As always, the approach remains ' ignore what he says, observe what he does'.

First up, it's important to note that the PM hasn't actually made a very good start at all - it's just that people are gullible and his spinners (whatever he says) are still hard at it. His approach to the flooding was to say nothing until the waters had receded, and then make a fleeting visit to Sheffield. The money he set aside to help the disaster was both hopelessly inadequate and (as usual) not all new money at all. His next gambit was to get up to his old 'run up flagpole and leak' nonsense on the subject of Iraq, as a result of which the US administration got completely confused - and fairly aggressive. Thus speeches had to be hastily withdrawn, and Gordon was forced to give grovelling reassurances. Having done that (natch) he started pulling troops out of Iraq like the place had cholera or something - as well as insisting that it wasn't happening.

The foot and mouth and blue tongue outbreaks were serendipitous- there's not much anyone can do about that stuff, apart from ignore jittery scientists and maintain a cool head. Brown has distanced himself from these affairs - rather like he did over Iraq. As for the attempted bombings - well, he made lots of sympathetic noises (what else was he going to do?) and then - having talked prior to his Coronation about increasing personal liberties - offered the police and security services a further raft of new powers. He followed this by cuddling up to Fraulein Merkel, and agreeing to help her force through the most undemocratic, controlling and utterly unnecessary constitution in European history. (See Life in the Wrong Lane)

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Do markets really decide?

It's a tricky question, but on balance it takes about two seconds to formulate a reply along the lines of 'no'.

There are two reasons for this. First, inanimate things don't decide anything, because they don't have a brain. Sometimes consumers decide, and sometimes other folks do. Second - and closely related to these 'other folks' - while markets being allowed to 'decide' sounds very brave and take-it-like-a-man, it's amazing how the main beneficiaries of market fluctuation run for cover when the decision is less clearly in their favour.

We may all be back in caves and trees by this time next year, but those responsible will still be offering loans to Mr & Mrs Wayne Ug from the safety of large ocean-going yachts. For as we have seen on four separate occasions so far in the credit fudge, the only ones still standing when the fudge hits the fan are the taxpayers.

This is not Friedmanite economics as I understand it, but setting this reality to one side for a moment, there are three schools of thought about where the West is heading commercially and financially as 2007 draws to a close. One says pear-shaped any day now, another says if we hold our nerve everything will be dandy, and a Third Way says it'll be one of those two. Regular fans of nby will know that I'm firmly in the tits-up camp (mind you, I have been since 2005,so what do I know?) and my instinct tells me that the longer you lie on a volcano, the bigger the bang when you get off. Bit like Heather Mills-McCartney, really.

Three stories last weekend did strike me as especially pertinent, however. The first was by the Sunday Times' financial guru David Smith, who devoted a whole page (itself flagged on the front page) to 'Credit Crunch: how worried should you be?' He spent 3000 words saying maybe you should be, and maybe you shouldn't - it was hard to tell. It was a remarkable piece of fence-sitting, in which one paragraph about a total collapse of the banking system was followed by another imagining a slow climb back to the sunny uplands of eternal growth. A lot of journalism is like this, and always has been. But this chap is supposed to be a leading expert. I smiled in admiration as I got to the end of the article.

The second was in the Mail on Sunday, and discussed the way in which three or four hedge fund masterminds have spent the last few months using speculation to manipulate the price of oil upwards by roughly 40%. That's an awfully large increase, and an awfully huge amount of profit for no more than a dozen or so carpet-baggers. In fact (as several experts confirmed in both the FT and the Sunday Times) there is no shortage at all of oil; thus, you and I are paying over a quid a litre for petrol at the pumps so a few troughers can demonstrate their remarkable skills.

Call my sense of humour darkly macabre if you like, but these days I laugh out loud on reading this sort of stuff. The Mail's censorious account of monstrous racketeering really did have me giggling by the third column of the piece. The amusement for me came (as usual) from thinking of parallels. Alex Salmond poisoning Japanese whisky output to treble the price of Scotch. Jonathan Porritt radiating the Middle East and Texas in order to double the interest in clean transport. Or Diageo putting crack cocaine in alcopops - and then increasing the price tenfold, explaining that this was a socially responsible attempt to curb binge drinking.

The third was in Saturday's Telegraph, and noted (two months after nby did) that all New Labour has done with education is make the aspirant lower-middle classes pay (at least partly) for City College or fully private schooling - having forty years ago abolished grammar schools that provided exactly the same (probably better) quality free to everyone regardless of social background and solely upon ability.

However, the Telegraph went a headline hilariously too far with its 'parents flock to private sector' angle. The figures simply didn't stack up: a 1% rise in market share for private education is hardly a stampede to get little Dean into Rugby. One sentence noted with obvious desperation that 'in some wealthy areas, whereas two years ago 37% of children were privately educated, the figure is now 41%'. Stop the presses Scoop,we need a special here.

What in the name of tediously scrolling down this screen, you're wondering, has all this to do with anything?

Simply this: a journalist paid a whopping salary for his wise opinion offers everything up to but not including the opinion part of the deal, in an article about how free marketeers want the market to decide, and then the taxpayer to cough up when the market makes a decision not in their business model. A dozen fat slobs cause over thirty million citizens to pay over the odds, in order to manipulate a market whose decision to pump out more oil was also not to their liking. And a government repeats, over and over again for a decade, that they have cut taxes when all they've done is change taxes and double them - while a right-wing newspaper blatantly misleads readers into thinking that millions more Britons are having to starve in order to send their kids to public school. The market, it said, was deciding - when it quite clearly wasn't doing anything of the kind.

It kind of puts into perspective what a long, hard, uphill slog it's going to be restoring our civilisation to at least some semblance of the ethics that once made it unique.

The solution to this laughably obvious collapse in commercial and governmental morality is not the abolition of capitalism and democracy, but the reform of capitalism, and the restoration of a civic sense felt by the vast majority to be infinitely more important than money. The catalysts to get things rolling will be the bursting of cheap borrowing's South Sea Bubble, and the democratisation of Britain's electoral system.

Mervyn King is right, and Gordon Brown is wrong. Only a large dose of reality can teach grinning gluttons that at the end of their muddy little track lies the cliff edge. Getting working people to bale out incautious idiots will never achieve anything beyond encouraging them to do it again. (13.11.07)

Let us now blame junior men

Early in my career, a senior adman said to me "Any system is only as good as the people working it". His use of the verb was intentional, in that 'working the system' in the 1970s meant screwing it.

Following Mrs Thatcher's new broom, it was hoped by many that the Jobsworth-cum-idle types working the system would become extinct - threatened as they'd be by market pressures. It is one of the myths surrounding Baroness Thatcher that she cut the percentage of the workforce engaged in the public sector. Far from it: the Civil Service in particular was bigger when she left office than when she arrived in Number Ten.

In 2007, 'systems' to guide jobsworths have developed to a stage where they appear to be designed for folks who've had a frontal lobotomy. During PMQs last Wednesday, David Cameron described Darling's missing twenty five million ID details as 'a systemic failure'. He is wrong about this on almost any basis of relevance to the case.

First and foremost, it was a Human Resources failure. Some minor apparatchik who knew the rules perfectly well thought 'sod it', and sent a massive amount of sensitive information through the post without so much as registering it, let alone using Special D. Why on earth was such a drongo employed in the first place? Although the Union involved would have us believe that overwork caused an oversight, this is palpable bunk: that's like saying that an 'overworked' surgeon left a vitally needed human heart on a slab rather than immediately placing it in a sterile deep-freeze ambulance container.

Second (and more broadly) this represents a cultural failure. I refer not just to the 'let's stick a notice up and that'll solve it' tendency, but also the apparent desire of so many people today to assume that every rule is somebody else's responsibility - or doesn't apply to them. Across the full range of government - from armed forces procedure through to regulations for the maintenance of water-supply infrastructure - direction is blithely ignored. Last week, I waited four hours (after making three strong complaints) before an anti-infection gel dispenser was refilled at the main entrance of Weymouth hospital.

A complete re-engineering of citizen attitudes would be required to change this. After each flagrant example of poor behaviour in such instances - and subsequent disasters - we are always treated to junior ministers and senior officials saying "Well, I think the important thing is that we can learn the lessons of this appalling situation". The problem is, we don't seem to learn any more.

Third, there was a failure of Civil Service attitude. Ho-hum, we seem to have lost the population's personal details. Ah well, they'll turn up - in the meantime, let's send them again. When - thirty days later - they hadn't surfaced, the Chancellor was forced to make a humiliating statement to Parliament.

It is a terrifyingly ironic situation we find ourselves in. Civil servants are quite happy to let things drift because they have gold-plated pensions and will never face either re-election or the chop. And senior politicians used to the aphrodisiac of power will do anything which presses balm onto the electorate (whether this be effective or not) so they can have yet more years of riding about in a world hermetically sealed from day to day reality.

Fourth, there has been a failure of policy. As any sane human being of maturity could tell you, there is no such thing as 'twenty-five million secrets'. Keeping that number of details secret is the goal of those not grounded in reality - whom nby calls the Wuts*. Exactly the same flaw (along with the obvious possibility of absolute State power) is apparent in the whole idea of an ID system. Access will be restricted, but lazy and/or greedy individuals will find ways round that. If the regular arrival of state secrets in Moscow from 1942 until 1982 doesn't make this clear to deluded control-freaks, then nothing will.

Finally, there has been a failure caused by Prime Ministerial tramline vision, and his inability to accept that any strategy he follows might - just possibly - be wrong. Gordon Brown's much-vaunted 'apology' was a narrow affair indeed: he apologised for the 'inconvenience' caused to Benefit recipients. No remorse was shown in relation to exposing a majority of the electorate to rampant fraud. Disgracefully, he went on to suggest that with a 'Tory' level of Revenue staff cuts, the situation might have been worse. How exactly? Does his logic suggest that the fewer the hands at the wheel, the more private information will be dished out?

Predictably, the Prime Minister announced a review. So look, he seemed to say when challenged by the Opposition Leader: I've apologised, I've blamed somebody, and there'll be an enquiry - what is your problem squire? But a review is merely another system, another procedure, another House of Lords crony to be leaned upon in the event of his or her finding anything embarrassing - or criminal. (To be specific, my Junior Treasury source has already questioned Brown's definition of 'junior' in relation to the Civil Servant involved. This is presumably like the Palace's definition of a 'distant' relative of the Queen in the blackmail affair of three weeks ago.)

I think there are two issues at stake here, and both are far more important than any one event.

The first is that Brown's spin-free, open, libertarian, competent and 'strong' difference in style is well and truly dead and buried. Those commentators who argue this is 'the end of the honeymoon' are mistaking small tiff for multiple adultery. Only a series of spectacular own-goals from the Opposition can save this Government from henceforth being a paraplegic duck.

Secondly - and this is simply the nature of cyclical politics under our system of constant media-glare - the Administration that has taken over from Blair's is behaving more and more like that of Major after 1992: the way seems so littered with tired ideas, banana skins, underservedly saved skins, sleaze, and indifference, there is no room for any real progress to be made.

The real problem for the Nation is that atop this heap of mediocrity sits a man who shares the same blind obstinacy as Margaret Thatcher - but none of her will, decisiveness or conviction. (20.11.07)

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This may not be the end of Brown, but it is the start of something better

Perhaps the most oft-quoted example of positivity without undue optimism is the Commons statement by Churchill in 1942: the old toper remarked that Rommel's defeat was not the beginning of the end but 'the end of the beginning' of final victory. While Gordon Brown's 'style' of Government is unravelling before our eyes - as he is surely doing behind locked doors - Churchill's measured assessment is a perfect guiding light for all those who want to see an end to this Establishment, and the arrival (at last) of a new ethical dawn.

For all that he is mentally deformed and totally unsuited to either team politics or national leadership, the Prime Minister's personality will thrive on last-redoubt bunker government. There are still (in theory) eighteen months before New Labour must face the music, during which anything from unpredicted national crisis to Conservative own-goals might dramatically snatch Brown from the back molars of electoral slaughter.

I very much doubt it, if only because the main crisis is both widely expected - and more likely to be a final coffin nail than a daring leap to safety. But there will be more protestations of strong leadership, more 'fresh starts', more lies and more stunts before this particular game is finally over. Best to get in a good stock of silver bullets, crucifixes and scandals to ensure the Undead are finally banished to the Other Side.

What I think we can be certain about now is that the confluence of historical catalysts is in place, and a growing current will take all of us (whether willing or not) into the new zeitgeist. But if it's no longer a question of 'if', the matter of 'when' is still very important: this process could take twenty years, or two - from here on, it all depends on us.

Four years ago, the US TV series Desperate Housewives - easily the most seditious programme to come out of America in years - declared open season on surreal examples of political correctness, feminism, corporate life-imbalance, indebtedness, sexual license and anything else it could take a swipe at.

In the intervening years, major American writers and academics have blown their incorrect cover, been subjected to the usual East Coast hail of hate - but found support and survived.

Since the start of 2006, 'spin' has become a four-letter word that people shrink from using in polite company.

After years of central bankers unwisely propping up global 'growth' with low-rate, indiscriminate lending, the likes of Mervyn King have finally started to say 'call time, and call in the debt'.

Leaders of all races, cultures, communities and religions are calling for an end to appeasement, and an acceptance that soft-pedalling on asylum seekers, mass immigration and extremism must stop. During 2007 - especially since Blair's disappearing trick - firemen, policemen, social workers, backbench MPs, Health Workers, pension quangos, prison authorities, radio talk hosts and virtually every other kind of opinion influencer has argued that crazy sentences, drink laws, debt levels and gambling developments are the antithesis of what's required to bring some sanity back to our culture.

This year, three separate corporate bodies have criticised the Government for dragging their feet on carbon output.

Since the middle of September, I've met people actually finding it hard to get a loan. (And in every case, deservedly so).

Three weeks ago, a senior corporate opinion leader delivered a devastating critique of Birtist Management Consultancy syntax as 'gibberish'. Other business speakers have begun to question whether (if utilities greed can't be contained voluntarily) we need obligatory infrastructural investment and price control. Even some of my more Friedmanite chums are asking if laissez faire economics can possibly always be the answer. Several are now joining the chorus questioning the inevitability of Globalism.

A fortnight ago, our abysmal soccer performance against a tiny Balkan nation finally made the FA's Chief Executive wonder if high salaries paid to overgrown children were really the way to introduce excellence into the grass roots of the beautiful game.

Last week, senior American bankers started to admit that the 'toxic' sub-prime crisis is not just a blip. On Wednesday, a remarkable piece by Gillian Tett in the Financial Times gave four frighteningly well-argued reasons why sub-prime must and will spread to the broader economy - and all of our lives.

What we are seeing here is an end to blind optimism, and the revival of empiricism: 'I have seen the present, and it doesn't work'. The next stage will be the emergence of socio-political observers calling for a new approach to how we elect and how we are governed. Simon Jenkins and Rod Liddle are already leading the charge. It is too early yet to tell whether the Conservatives will be mown down by this, or step to one side, or shout 'My Kingdom for a horse'. Whatever they do, the process is unstoppable. (27.11.07)

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The Second Chance

As the years pile on and the seventh decade beckons, I'm beginning to understand just how important it is to give folks a second chance.

There's more to this than love, peace and philanthropy: the second go given to someone who cocked up (or ran amok) the first time around can reveal hitherto undiscovered treasures - and at a heavily discounted price. My final few years in advertising held one or two triumphs of hiring so-called 'old lags' who wanted another crack at life. Great football managers often do the same - most notably Brian Clough.

In one's private life, people who failed us, seemingly 'screwed' us (or were just plain nasty to us) become demons with the distance offered by time. Yet it is extraordinary how - on occasionally meeting examples again twenty years on - I now realise I must have been equally at fault, if only because they're obviously very decent people with all the same problems of health and finance that come to us all.

With most reasonably balanced individuals, maturity brings a degree of calm and rather more wisdom to soothe the aches and pains. Sadly, our contemporary media do not allow this reality to brighten up the dark colour of their hasty judgement: once a love-rat, always a love-rat, and all that.

On a tiny advertising stage twenty-five years ago, I was the gruff Planner, the northerner who didn't suffer fools, the ruthlessly ambitious nasty piece of work in too much of a hurry. There was considerably more than a grain of truth in all that, but once established, the image stuck long after such behaviour had been consigned to the past. In the late 1980s, Michael Bungey saw more than this in me, and offered The Second Chance I badly needed. He and others allowed my last decade in the business to be one of Autumn Gold.

What astonished (and horrified) me on arriving at the then Dorland was how many people greeted my arrival with ridiculously tall stories about what an unmitigated shit I was. Most people were won over in time, but others just needed to believe the Hobgoblin propaganda. Later still (in relation to others in need of a second chance) I noticed how often these very same diehards were the first to condemn and the last to forgive. I met one only three weeks ago; he badmouthed a friend of mine who (also in the early years) had something of a wide-boy reputation. Nothing I said could persuade this chap from his relentless spittle of hatred.

I think the extrapolation from this is simple enough: big people don't like others to fail. On the whole, they enjoy the renaissance of somebody written off. Small people revel in all this, because it ensures there are others with further to fall than them.

I am also bound to observe that, disturbingly often, the judgemental moral pygmies are the very ones on their fifth chance - but still blowing it. For these people, I have developed a life rule from which I rarely waver: give them the second chance, accept it when they don't take it - and try to forgive. But what you shouldn't do is forget. To forgive these folks is divine, but to forget their modus operandi is dumb. For they are the ones who will never change - and should thus be avoided. (10.12.07)

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Time to take the money out of politics

Hardly has the dust settled on the Jewish Donor Conspiracy than the Islamic Conspiracy of Imran Khand hoves into view (£300,000 worth of electoral law evasion) alongside Lord Ashcroft's Tory donations of nearly £3million over five years, dished out with an air of spend, spend, spend to Conservative candidates in marginal constituencies.

Call me old-fashioned, but the TUC bankrolling penniless, disenfranchised Labour MPs in 1897 seems to me entirely justified given that the playing field of the day belonged to Eton School - and offered a heavy slope in the ruling class's favour. In 1997 - and now in 2007 - the word I'd use is unacceptable. As for wealthy Tories getting help from the likes of Ashcroft, the only clean word that springs to mind is unpalateable.

There are a number of important issues here, and they should not be obscured by the unimaginative tabloid sub-editor's obsession with 'sleaze'. For the real problem - unelected influence - goes to the very core of our libertarian democratic system.

First and foremost, there are certain times when - via a mixture of big money, vote concentration and time aperture - relatively small interest groups can dominate British politics. Usually, such influence is to the detriment of the majority's needs. During the last four decades, we have seen this in relation to the Liberal Party (when Heath tried to stave off a Labour Government) the TUC (when undemocratic block-voting could have undermined Parliament's sovereignty) the media (when Murdoch power threatened to give him two million votes to everyone else's one) dodgy foreign interests (when half-mad oil-barons almost bankrolled the Opposition's campaign in total) illiberal religious interests (when Islamic concentrations in Bradford and Leicester got perilously close to legalised privilege) and now 'secret' (aka bent) donations threatening to give power to already rich people at both local and national level.

In this context, I would offer the view that British electoral politics are no less corrupt today than they were under the Rotten Boroughs of eighteenth century England.

Second, 'unelected' must surely now be applied as a term (by all rational observers) to many of our sitting MPs, in that such 'elected' representatives are - in over 250 cases in the current House of Commons - there thanks to a minority level of support in their constituencies. The single transferable vote (STV) system is one of the keys to truly devolving responsibility and democracy in our culture. This and this alone can break the stranglehold of the Big Two parties, neither of whom represent electors in the meaningful sense of that verb any more. Make 'first past the post' the system of choice, and you immediately open the influence door directly to anyone who is rich and can count.

Third, like it or not, Britain's new mega-rich have found ever-more insidious ways (underwriting City Colleges being the latest) of getting the Establishment's ear. And the Establishment's ear - be it New Labour or Conservative - is elephantine in proportion, but utterly lacking in shrewd discernment in relation to the schmooze it is hearing. As the CBI's more wealthy members (and the TUC's bigger battalions) have demonstrated in the past, politicians like power - but they recognise that under the current system it takes money - ' in large amounts' as Ron Moody's Fagin opined - to achieve it and protect it.

Penultimately (but perhaps most important) the 'lost deposit' system - quite genuinely imposed to stop the lunatic vote getting any representation - is retained today as an utterly cynical means by which grass-roots concerns can be denied access to the political process. To me, 'disenfranchised' is simply the arse-side of a coin called 'unelected'.

Finally, in a bizarre and almost obscene rebuttal of its origins, New Labour's soi-disant 'reform' of the upper chamber has produced nothing more than a latter-day Etats-Generals - the wealthy and aristocratic 'parlement' sop given out to the democratic dupes in the years before France's 1789 revolution. Scroll down the list of the new life-peers 'enobled' by Blair and his seedy apparatchiks, and you will see only drones ever-prepared to do the Government's bidding - regardless of either constitutional or national interest.

The solution to this cess-pit of unearned influence is extremely straightforward: the banning forthwith of all donations to political parties, and the creation - however bitter the taste may be to most of us - of a tax-funded pot available to all realistic political groupings for the furtherance of their aims.

There are two major objections to this. The first is once again the 'keep out the loonies' barrier of maintaining a high cost of entry. My answer to this is that if only money is keeping out the loonies, then we are in a parlous state indeed. The second revolves around the 'bottomless pit' fear: that everyone and his mother will want to stand for Parliament and thus make a mockery of the electoral process. Again, I think only a modicum of imagination is required to make something practical of my term 'realistic political groupings' in the above paragraph. A research study of 8,000 voters (ruling out all those parties obtaining less than, say, 7% of voting intentions) would have a margin of error at almost zero, and cost very little in the greater scheme of things.

An additional way to avoid the bottomless pit, of course, would be to say up front that the pit is finite: there are £20 million in the fund, and that's yer lot. Make of it what you will, guys - but each of you will have to make do on what's available.

How would it be apportioned? Well, most definitely not on level of support. Let us say for example that five Parties passed the research 'Primary' - Tories, Labour, Libdems, Greens, BNP - and a new lot called The Clean Reform Party. Then quite simply they would be given 20% each and told to get on with it. Each would have equal (but very limited) access to Political Broadcast airtime. And all would be banned from undertaking 'paid-for' advertising beyond leaflets clearly and only setting out the policies they advocated.

None of these ideas are pie in a cloud-cuckoo sky. They would instantly remove massive wealth and unelected influence from any role in our Parliamentary system. No, the reason they won't be enacted is because they would destroy - in the only positive sense of that verb - the stranglehold dinosaur Parties have on our system of government.

In the US, the log-cabin to White House story is almost impossible today - simply because for nearly a century, both major Parties have been unassailable institutions based upon the patronage of massive fame and wealth. This ghastly system has produced (among others) Warren Harding, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. If the same fate is not to befall our democracy - in most senses, the cradle of libertarian democracy - then we must find a way to put pressure for change upon those running what's left of the United Kingdom into the ground.

(13.12.07)

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Civilisation may end with a whimper, but its decline begins with a sneer

As I was watching a 'Best Ever' movie compilation on television the other night, something clunked into place inside the infernal machine that is my thinking system. It wasn't something I particularly wanted in that place, clunked or otherwise. But there it has remained, and I can't for the life of me get rid of it.

The film in question was Monty Python's Life of Brian, and the blasphemy case Mary Whitehouse and others tried to bring against it. The film itself looked as funny as ever, and as an added bonus there was the hilarious TV debate between Muggeridge and a gay bishop on the one hand, and Michael Palin plus Jon Cleese on the other. Not only did Cleese run languid intellectual rings round St Mugg, Palin uttered one of his best lines, telling the self-styled 'open-minded' Bishop that he was "so relieved" the old puff had brought his mind ready-opened.

It was all a jolly jape, but the sequence left me with an uneasy feeling that has been nagging at me on and off for a couple of years now. I think I'm finally ready to put into words what the unease consists of, but for various reasons I do so with trepidation. You see, it's all very well for mega-bright University students to argue cogently about why Brian was harmless, but for some of the thicker folks wondering what to think about Christianity thirty years ago, I'm not sure it was harmless at all.

Towards the end of his life, I happened to work with Alf Garnett's inventor Johnny Speight. His creation Til Death do us Part represents a similar case to that of the Pythons biblical epic, in that while all we frightfully erudite intellectuals spotted immediately that Alf was an appalling bigot, lots of dockers all over the country thought him a good ol' boy setting an example to all of us. Speight had come to realise this, and people I know who've met Alf's player Warren Mitchell tell me he had the same equivocal feelings about the monster Garnett. It was yet another case of the elite being too clever by half.

From here on, this piece sinks ever deeper into the murky waters of potentially patronising reaction - but that won't hold me back any more. As 2008 dawns, I'm more certain than ever that taking the piss is fine for those who know its various levels, but not for the drongos who just fink it's a bit of a larf, like.

The late Peter Cook remains a hero of mine. A man who punctured pomposity more precisely than any other Twentieth Century Briton, he took a giant scimitar to the ruling class from 1960 onwards - whether that class consisted of Macmillans, Wilsons, Blairs, Union leaders, senior policemen, high court judges or soccer managers. His sketch Entirely a Matter for You (written and then peformed live on stage within five hours of the Thorpe judge's summing up) is a gem that everyone in awe of brainless authority should hear at least once in their lives.

But like so many of the satirists and Pythons and 'alternative' comics of the last four decades, Cook was a very bright and classically educated man. He knew why the Establishment was funny - but a huge proportion of his audience probably rarely got beyond the custard-pie element of laughing at Those in Charge. In the end, a generation of educationally mediocre people grew up thinking that all authority figures must be plonkers, because those clever blokes on the telly like John Mortimer, Clive Anderson, Ian Hislop, Eric Idle, Alan Bennett, John Bird and Rory Bremner just couldn't help seeing the funny side of them.

This is not as sweeping a generalisation as you might at first imagine. By the time you've ridiculed judges, politicians, teachers, vicars, fathers, housewife mums, coppers and royalty, there's little or nothing left to look up to. This is fine if you were born into a position on the class system where you're more likely to look down than up. But for those at the bottom (being advised on a daily basis in school that odd behaviour and giggling at PC Plod is fine) the experience is both disorientating, and likely to breed an attitude of contempt. I'm not sure that Essex Woman's contempt for Prince Philip and brainless adoration of Princess Diana is much of an improvement on cap-doffing and knowing one's place.

Of course, the obvious defence offered by those who have unpicked the culture over the last half-century is that if the Establishment behaves in a crass and hypocritical manner, then it deserves every brickbat thrown in its direction. I back this view entirely, but would nevertheless like to know what exactly is going to replace the old system. Certainly, nobody of sound mind can imagine that delusional pc apparatchiks, la-la land politicians, greedy commercial chieftains, social workers, feckless Underclass males and foul-mouthed stand-ups are the ideal raw material for a stable, law-abiding society where people look out for each other.

The easiest charge to lay at my door on the basis of this piece is that of young Leftie become aging curmudgeon along the heavily-trodden trail of Kingsley Amis, and all those other Angry Young Men who became Grumpy Old Men. This seems to me fair game, but doesn't answer the fundamental concern: given most human pack members need to sign up for what the Alphas think is best for everyone (or face anarchic chaos and the encroachment of rival packs) who and where are the Alphas today? And if and when they emerge, what good will be served by tabloid journalists hounding them into forced retirement?

Unquestioning obedience is a terrible idea. But relentlessly negative mickey-taking is almost as bad. Perhaps there is a new humorous form floating in the ether somewhere, via which better ways of running Britain can be made to tickle ribs rather than poke chests: I don't know, and to be honest I doubt it. Either way, knocking the house down is a bad idea if the only alternative is a pigsty.

(7.1.08)

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Could Hillary still be the main event in America's last-chance saloon?

When notbornyesterday called Barack Obama as the likely Democrat winner in Iowa last year, it did so with a sense of sadness. The editorial view remains that Hillary Clinton would make a better President, and engage in genuine reform with the minimum of rhetoric.

I felt (and still feel) that an experienced fixer with real inside experience of the White House and Congress is precisely what the USA needs at the moment. For me, there is a lesson to be learned from the Kennedy/Johnson ticket in 1960: while JFK gave Americans a vision, he was a novice when it came to Congress in general and getting liberal laws passed in particular. It was typical of his successor LBJ that he knew precisely how to exploit the Congressional sympathy vote following Kennedy's assassination. In the first few months of 1964, for example, Johnson pushed through more integrational and welfare legislation than Bobby and Jack had managed in the previous three years.

Of course, the likelihood of an eventual Obama/Clinton ticket in 2008 is distant bordering on surreal: I cannot imagine why Democrat bosses would ever go with a ticket on which rode a black man and a left-liberal woman.

What makes 'real issue' politics so fascinating to sad folks like me is that - probably more so in America than anywhere else - people really will get off their butts and vote to stop something. Thus Hillary Clinton's victory in New Hampshire (where the 40+ female turn out was truly amazing) did, I suspect, reflect the feelings of middle-aged women who are tired of talk and hungry for walk. The female gender has always been more practical and pragmatic than the male, and nowhere was this more clearly evidenced than in the Comeback State two days ago. They clearly see Clinton as a walker, and Obama as a talker.

Once again, the media are obsessed with 'why oh why were the polls wrong?' when taking off the pc blindfold would reveal the truth instantly: nobody likes admitting they ain't gonna vote for the black guy. Faced with socially correct mania, people lie to market researchers.

What the bosses in Denver's smoke-free Democratic Convention rooms will be asking themselves six months from now is, how many US States are like New Hampshire? Obama remains the clear leader among digruntled Republican voters. While John McCain seems to be not so much forging ahead as foraging in the issues, we must all remember that this is a man who has been Jon Stewart's punch-bag joke guest on The Daily Show for some years now: Reagan and Schwarzenegger notwithstanding, do Americans - in their current mood - really want an affable loser in the Oval Office. The sheer weight of media attention on the challengers strikes me as making this the most difficult task in history for a GOP candidate.

As I said last November, most grown-up American voters want change. What New Hampshire women have said is that they want deliverable change - and Hillary is their woman.

I still think Obama will get the nomination, chiefly because (a) he is rock-solid among young voters of both parties (b) enough older Republicans would rather have him than McCain, and (c) in the redneck States, Hillary Clinton is one small diagnosis up from cancer. This last point may well hold the key to both nomination and election: while Clinton polarises, Barack Obama has the 'let's hear it for a fresh start' New Frontierism that gets people excited.

But I sincerely hope I'm wrong: for Hillary Clinton really would change America - and in a way that would enable it to face an uncertain future without becoming illiberal.