Our Cabinet and Its Shadows - Qualified to Govern and/or Oppose?

A few weeks ago, I got a bit cross about the perceived need to get a bloody degree at any cost (and, quite frankly, in any subject) in the pursuit of Blair's pointless dream of education times three. It occurred to me at the time that almost all of the current Coalition Government and their shadows in the Labour Party are all graduates, mostly in PPE from Oxbridge colleges.

It further occurred to me that almost none of them had ever held down what the rest of us might reasonably understand as a "proper job", as opposed to hundreds of ordinary MPs who have worked for a living before seeking public office but haven't an ice cube's chance in Hell of ever getting close to a cabinet post and thereby any real say in the running the country.

Time to investigate this a little more thoroughly, I think...and we may as well start with my favourite:

George Gideon Oliver Osborne: Chancellor of the Exchequer (40)

(Mr G. GOO, then - jut a step backwards from Mr & Mrs Watt naming their son Thomas, really). Anyway, Giddy was so good at writing stuff down that he thought he might become a journalist but his daddy was a baronet and had a posh wallpaper business so he wasn't that well acquainted with the "dirty digger"and as little thickie Giddy could only manage a second in History at Oxford and it was clear he couldn't be trusted with the family business...well, it had to be politics. So it was straight to Conservative Party Central Office and after no time at all he was in the research department, then at MAFF as a special advisor and almost immediately on to being bag carrier for Hague, the then party leader. (Yes! He was! Honest!) In 2001, he was given the constituency of Tatton in Cheshire (sorry, I meant to say he was elected as MP there) after the "Man in the White Suit" stood down. 

Conclusion: No proper job. Ever.

Edward Tarquin Twistleton-Smythe-Balls: (only joking - Edward Michael Balls) Shadow Chancellor (44)

Ed Balls joined the Labour Party when he was 16 but was also a member of the Oxford University Conservative Association - ha! Kept that one quiet, didn't he? He fiddled about for a couple of years as a "writer" for the FT, spouting Labour rhetoric during the press's campaigns against an ailing Thatcher and a hapless Major before becoming one of a hoard of lackeys to Gordon Brown in 1994. This lead to him becoming chief economic advisor to Brown in the latter's early years as Chancellor before the party rewarded him with the retiring Bill O'Brien's seat in West Yorkshire. I'd like to think that the Labour Party found Balls as odious as I do and had worked out that the Boundary Commission were about to abolish his seat and create an even more tenuous constituency at Morley and Outwood, which may itself be abolished in the next round of changes, thus easing Balls out altogether (sorry...that sounded a bit rude).

Conclusion: No proper job. (Writing a bit doesn't count)

Daniel Grian "Beaker" Alexander: Chief Secretary to the Treasury (39)

After graduating in PPE at...guess where...Oxford, Danny Boy "worked" as a press officer for the Scottish Lib Dems before becoming Director of Communications for the European Movement (a pressure group for greater European integration whose president was former/current drunk Charles Kennedy) and then the same job in its successor, "Britain in Europe". After that, he was Head of Communications for the Cairngorms National Park NGO. In 2005, the new constituency of Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey (all one constituency) got Danny as their MP. Amongst his jobs for the Lib Dems was, in 2007, Shadow Secretary of State for Social Exclusion. I had no idea that there was a Secretary of State to actively exclude parts of society, but it makes sense now.

Conclusion: No proper job.

Harriet Ruth Harperson QC: Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Shadow Secretary of State for International Development (61)

Privately educated daughter of a doctor and a lawyer, Harriet studied politics at York. After she qualified she had a string of jobs practising law with organisations such as the Brent Law Centre and the National Council for Civil Liberties (now "Liberty") fighting social injustices and taking on cases where human rights and discrimination were at the core of the actions. Then she went an ruined everything by taking a parliamentary seat when she could, even now, have been side by side with Shami, kicking ass. Instead, she got sucked into the vortex that was the bitter and ugly wrangling within New Labour and came out stinking of shit like the rest of them. And she married Jack Dromey. What a fucking waste.

Conclusion: Had a kind of proper job and then threw it all away.

I could go on...so I will, but briefly...

David William Donald Cameron: Prime Minister (44)

Eton / Oxford / Conservative Party Researcher / Conservative Central Office / Special Advisor / Carlton Communications / MP / Party Leader / Prime Minister

Conclusion: No proper job (Telly doesn't count)

David Linsay Willetts: Minister for Universities and Science (55)

Oxford / Political Researcher / Tory Monetary Policy Head Wonk / Think Tankery (Centre for Policy Studies) / MP / Minister / Obtained "Second Brain" sometime in 2000.

Conclusion: No proper job.

Nicholas William Peter Clegg: Deputy Prime Minister (44)

Ski Instructor / Cambridge / European Commission / MEP / MP / Liberal Democrat Leader / Cabinet

Conclusion: No proper job but quite good at skiing.

Caroline Patricia Lucas: Leader of the Green Party (50)

Malvern Girls' College / Exeter University / CND / Green Party Council / MEP / MP

Conclusion: No proper job. Weird eyebrows.

Get the picture?

I don't know about you but I find this a bit scary.

And it's not just here in Britain either. All over the world, in those nations states that we believe are democracies, it's the same. And in the UN. The world is being run by a political class; one that has little or no experience of the world of employment (or unemployment), of struggle, discrimination and inequality that the rest of us inhabit.

Critics might say, "Well..you voted for them - so you get the governments you deserve, don't you?" But we don't have a choice. The political parties are infested with these careerists who ascend to positions of power bankrolled by wealthy power brokers or, Lord help us, the Unions. Our governments in the last few decades have been ceded power by as little as 25% of the electorate and yet still believe that that gives them the franchise to run stuff.

This isn't just a rant: Here's a solution on Constitutional Reform:

Let's leave Parliament as it is for now but bring in some quick and dirty rule changes for membership of the Commons:

1) All MPs must be aged 50 years or more

2) All MPs must have held down a "Proper Job" for at least fifteen years (see Appendix 1 below for list of qualifying jobs - combinations permitted as long as the fifteen years are completed. Appendix 2 lists occupations that are exclusions from qualification)

3) A maximum of 5% of elected MPs are Oxbridge graduates

4) A maximum of 5% of elected MPs attended fee-paying schools

Appendix 1:

"Proper Job" Qualifiers

Nurses

Doctors

Fire-fighters

Paramedics

Law Enforcement Officers

Building Trade Workers

Drivers

Manufacturers

Educators

Scientists

Engineers

Volunteers

Butchers

Bakers

All Artisans

Charity Workers

Social Workers

Any other Public Sector workers

Any Work With Your Hands (sex workers excluded)

Farmers / Agricultural Workers

Gardeners

Postal Workers

Any Office Worker (but see appendix 2 below)

The self-employed (but see appendix 2 below)

Hospitality Workers

Writers and Artists

Or Just Being...

• Shami Chakrabarti
• Will Self
• Sir Patrick Moore

• Ian Hislop
• Richard Ingrams (oh...if only)
• ...and so many other lovely people

....And Every Other Occupation That Isn't In Appendix 2, really...

Appendix 2:


Employment Exclusions


Merchant Bankers
Think Tank Wonks
Political Research Wonks
Union Leaders
Chief Executives
Spies
Drug Dealers
Pimps
Convicted Criminals
Current Chancellors of the Exchequer
Ed Balls
Ant and/or Dec
Philip Green
Richard Branson
Fraser Nelson
A.N. Wilson
Max "Hitler" Hastings
Professional Sportspeople
Actors
Horses (I just worry a bit about Caligula's Incitatus incident)

I'll precis all of this and put it up as a No 10 Petition...if I can be arsed...

....And that is why, principally, I get the government I deserve.

Forget HS2...How About London to Birmingham in 0.0005 Seconds?

There might have been a time when every schoolchild could have told you at what speed light travels. Alas, that's no longer the case, but I'm sure there's "an App for that" so they'd be able to find out. 

The speed is 186,000 miles every second (that's about 300,000 kilometers for those that have now eschewed imperial measures). This speed is a "constant", helpfully given the letter 'c', and applies to all "massless particles". How can something that is called a particle have no mass? Never mind...

Astronomical Unit!

Anyway, it's pretty bloody fast. But what you must remember is that this velocity only applies to light travelling in a vacuum. It slows down significantly when moving through something like glass, to a measly 200,000 kps but only about 100 kps slower when going through air, a difference to vacuum speed so small as to be largely immeasurable. To get these things into measures that are easier to cope with, a distance has been invented called an Astronomical Unit, or AU. An AU is c. 150 million kms (the distance between the Earth and the Sun). Light will travel 157 AUs every Earth Day. The next nearest star to our Solar System is Alpha Centauri, which is 243,000 AUs away. To make this more simple to cope with, there's another measure called a Light Year; that's the distance light will travel in a year (in a vacuum). Alpha Centauri is 4.25 Light Years from your house. 

We have, us humans, made some things go quite fast. The Space Shuttle, for example, went at almost 30,000 kph (in the near vacuum that is the first bit of space above our atmosphere) and did so with people inside it. Assuming that that speed could be maintained, the Shuttle would travel about 250 million kms in a year - so that'd be to our Sun and then most of the way back again. To reach Alpha Centauri at that speed would take about 36,000 years so it's pretty much off NASA's agenda at the moment. But wouldn't it be lovely if we could somehow get up to close to the speed of light and then visit our near neighbour in four or five years? And there'd be another fifty of so stars within 15 years travelling time too. Some of those might even have a planet or two that might, at a stretch, have some unicellular organic goo on them, and of whom we could ask to be taken to their leader - probably some bigger, multicellular goo. 

To throw all of this up into the air, some cone-headed physicists at Cern seem to have sent some neutrinos to somewhere in Italy (obviously the holiday destination of choice for sub-atomic particles) and they arrived there quicker than light would have done. Now as Einstein was of the opinion that nothing can travel faster than light, this incident might bring into question his relativity stuff. So off go all the brilliant physicists trying to establish whether this has really happened and, if it has, what it might all mean.

Physics Star Prof Cox with Ordinary Star

For us non-physicists, it's quite difficult to understand. Neutrinos exist, apparently. Well, not "apparently" really, as they're ridiculously tiny. And, of course, that's because they have no mass so they might not be "things" at all. But physicists can see them with expensive instruments and all we can do is look on in wonder and believe what they say, unless you're a creationist from Alabama, in which case you'd be more likely to dunk them in a witching chair. It's been easier to believe them lately in the UK because of burgeoning National Treasure, Professor Brian Cox who has, predictably, described this Cern issue as "amazing".  

Some Really Complicated Shit about
the Alpha Centauri Trinary System

What if it were possible to travel faster than light? OK, at the moment this appears to be the preserve of the massless, but Cox is not dismissing the curious events at Cern and has even posited the potential for stuff to move about in different dimensions and that might explain the anomaly. I prefer to deal only with the dimensions I know about. Just the standard three. So, in our 3-D universe, if it's possible to beat the speed of light by even a tiny bit, then it'll probably be possible to beat it by lots? Maybe one hundred times better? We could be at Alpha Centauri Space Station Central in a fortnight, once we've worked out how to become massless, of course, something that Kate Moss almost managed at one time so we shouldn't give up on it. 

That's fine when considering distances in AUs and Light Years, but as this inter-stellar travel would more than likely be the preserve of astronauts and Richard Branson, how would light-speed travel impact on us here on Earth? 

All this fuss over the HS2 trains would be redundant for a start. Instead of having to spend £33bn and ruining some upper middle class twits' gardens to make it possible to travel to Birmingham from London fifteen minutes quicker, we could save that money because you could get there in 0.0005 seconds! Actually, it might take longer than that as you wouldn't be travelling in a vacuum (well, possibly a cultural vacuum once you reached Birmingham) and then there's the tricky issue of needing to factor in acceleration from a standing position and deceleration back to being still again. Anyway, it couldn't be more than a couple of minutes...probably. 

Super-Luminal
Transporter Tube

Instead of the railtracks and all the infrastructure of motorways and airports, I imagine there'll just be a load of tubes everywhere (and I don't mean like the London Underground). There'd have to be tubes because travelling at super-luminal velocities could be very messy in the event that you hit something and they've been using sort of tubes at Cern, so that makes sense. The tubes would have some kind of anthro-accelerator at critical points to launch us off to our destinations. Holiday travel would be so quick that we wouldn't need to take as long a period off work, thus boosting the economy. By the time we'd mastered sending humans along the tubes, we'd have already got goods moving super-luminally, providing huge reductions in carbon emissions from aircraft, ocean freighters and trucks. The benefits are boundless.

Cameron should call an immediate halt to everything else and start up the Minsitry of Super-Luminal Movement, with Prof Cox in charge and divert any money that might be left in the Treasury to this important initiative. He should also sack Steve Hilton straight away for not thinking this shit up ages ago in one of his idiotic "Blue-Sky-Thinkeries".

A big "Well Done" to the pointy-heads at Cern, then. World, Galactic and Universal problems solved by whooshing tiny little things to to Italy from France. Sarkozy will be pleased too, I suppose, as he's marginally bigger than a neutrino. Bless.

MoneySavingAmateur.com

Is it just me, or is Martin Lewis a bit of a twat?

OK, his MoneySavingExpert website probably does have some good tips but most of them seem to require an awful lot of time, work and, let's face it, risk. The risks are usually associated with not following the painfully exact instructions on how to save 5p every four million years by changing your supplier of some unneeded service. And if you don't do it right, then guess what? It's not Martin's fault, and never ever will be, of course.

When he's on the radio (with the sublimely professional Sheilagh Fogarty) for BBC 5Live, he is just so cock-sure of himself in his little bubble of saving millions of consumers from the nasty machinations of corporations that he seems to believe spend all their waking hours dreaming up new ways to screw the public. And then there's the poor, deluded saps that phone in to receive his sage advice on how to deal with their mounting debts. The answers are always the same. "Get some different debt from someone who charges you less money than you're paying for your current debt", delivered in the patronising tone that can only come from someone who has made shedloads of money out of everyone else's financial misery, just by stating the bleeding obvious. And they're oh-so grateful for being told what they already knew, had they just been honest with themselves.

Money-Saving Device:
Use on either Credit Cards or Wrists

Just once I'd like Lewis to say to the hapless little tit that's phoned in out of desperation - coupled with a desire for the non-existent cachet of being on the radio...."How in hell have you run up credit card bills of ninety zillion quid when you're only twenty, you knob-headed git? Go and look in the nearest mirror and see the terminally thick moron is looking back at you." 

But Ooooh! Noooo.... It's not my fault, says the reflection, of course. It's the government. It's the cuts. It's the council. It's the Europeans, But most of all, naturally, it's the bloody bankers that forced an idiot to borrow so much money on their evil cards and overdrafts with a metaphorical gun pointed at their brainless skulls. It's never bloody well you, though, is it!?

Well here's a revelation: it is you. You have done this. You have got this debt mountain that you refuse to climb and conquer, instead demanding that someone like Lewis provides you with a "Get Out of Debtors' Prison Free" card. Stop blaming everyone else for your idiotic profligacy. 

Forget Lewis and all the other pundits that profess to have found the philosopher's stone of escape from penury. 

Here are MoneySavingAmateur's amazing top ten tips to avoid financial ruin. These are unconditional. If you follow these tips then I can GUARANTEE that you will never be in debt. (Terms and conditions apply - available on request through a tortuous sequence of questions that make sure that you never get to the end of them - alternatively you can just tick a box that absolves me from any blame - a bit like confession for Roman Catholics).

1) Don't get into debt. Follow this piss-easy two step guide... 

a) Live within your means. This means not buying shit you can't afford. This is the fundamental rule in MoneySavingAmateur's guide to financial freedom. 

b) Never become a student unless you're foreign, Scottish, or have a rich daddy.

It was all simpler then?

2) Make do and mend. It worked in the War. Your t-shirt may have been made in a sweat-shop in Mumbai for 5p, but that doesn't mean you have to throw it away after you've vomited down it after the binge-drinking you can't afford. If you tear your jeans scrambling over a razor-wire fence escaping from a police "kettle', then rejoice! It's now a pair of Paltrow designer denims that don't even need mending!

3) Don't do anything that might (in any way) be fun. Things that are fun tend to cost a lot of money, like skiing and crack cocaine.

4) Become a drug dealer. This is the only "Optional Tip" from the this list. (WARNING: Although this career choice can be extremely lucrative and provide a nest-egg for your old age, it could also seriously affect your ability to live beyond the age of thirteen and/or have a reductive impact on your liberty and result in high-end physical damage in E-wing at Strangeways)

5) Don't be Irish or Greek  or Portuguese (add other Euro-zone nationalities to this list as their Governments default).

6) Remember that money doesn't grow on trees. Fruit does. And it's worth considering that fruit is often - calorie for calorie - a lot cheaper than McShit burgers. 

7) Marry Well. A lot of people don't seem to want to get married any more. But just have a look at the following examples of some seriously wealthy men and women who have achieved financial security by marrying well and make your own judgements as to whether this is a good tip or not. 

• Heather Mills: No talent, weird, one leg. Now a multi-millionairess. 
• Mike Tindall: Ugly, cleavage-snogging, dwarf-throwing, World-Cup-losing piss-head. Now sixth (or thereabouts) in line to the throne. 
• Cherie Booth: Scouse daughter of alcoholic. Now property tycoon, judge and wife of the future President of the World.  

8) Never gamble (not to be confused with 'gambol'. Gambolling is something that can be done for free although it can look a little odd in the wrong circumstances like, say, at funerals). Gambling is for mugs - but it is rare that crockery will be the items gained through this activity, unless you do bingo. It's said that "The House always wins" when it comes to gambling, and let's face it, it's bad enough to lose money at gambling but when the winner is a piece of real estate, it just makes it so much worse...

9) Don't throw your money away. That's just stupid.

10) Get a fucking job, you lazy bastard. 

So, there we are then. MoneySavingAmateur has the answers. These may not be the same ones that Martin Lewis comes up with but, like MoneySavingExpert.com, they're absolutely free. The big difference is that, MoneySavingAmateur comes from a place so far below the Lewis moral high ground that it's possible to see right up his patronising, holier-than-thou, money-saving arse...that being the same one that he talks out of...probably.

Game Shows for the Modern Age: No. 2

In this irregular series on my blog, I'll be setting out the game show formats that I've been submitting to the Commissioning Editors and Producers of Channel 5 just to see how far they might be prepared to go. I despair of Channel 5 more than I do of BBC3 but, in their defence, all of my ideas have been either ignored or, in one case, critically rejected, which means that someone actually read beyond the title!

No. 2: Universities: Challenged!

Game Show Scenario:

English Higher Education System-based contest
Production: Studio with Audience: Critical Element - see below

Contestants:

Vice-Chancellors of Universities leading a team of two faculty heads from their college(s).

Format:

Sixteen Vice-Chancellors' teams go head-to-head in eight first round contests on a knock-out basis with four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and a grand final over a fifteen weeks series - Mid June to end September.

Objective:

Teams must persuade a panel of nine potential under-graduate students and one post-graduate student to apply to their University.

Method:

Each team has five minutes to present their case. The panel then has five minutes to question the team. The winning team must secure a majority of the panel. The grand final presentations and question times are increased to ten minutes.

At the end of the panel's questions, the audience is invited to make comments - another five minute slot.

In the event of a 5-5 draw, the audience vote will decide the winner (see below)

The panels:
The panels of potential students are different for each contest and represent the appropriate demographic of university applicants from the previous academic year (England only - the vagaries of fee systems for foreign students and those in Scotland and Wales would make the contest too complex). The panels are rigged to ensure that the result is a 5-5 draw (see audience vote, below)

Vice Chancellors' Presentation Materials:

There are no restrictions. In order that these pitches represent "real life", the team can make up loads of crap about their University's results, fees and what happens to their graduates. They are allowed to bring along one alumnus to underline their claims (optional).

Jokers: 

Opposing teams can bring in a 'Joker" at any point in the contest. Examples of Jokers might be:

• Ed Balls, to explain how undemocratic Oxbridge Colleges are if one of them is your opposing team (might backfire, of course, as he went to Oxford)
• Jeremy Paxman, to sneer, if your opposition is red-brick.
• A post graduate from the opposing university who had a really shit time, a crap education and no job at the end of it

Contest Chairperson:
This is a moderator's role including introductions and time-keeping plus the key element of controlling the five-minute audience slot.
Target talent: David Mitchell / Alexei Sayle / Victoria Beckham / Ant and/or Dec / Pete Doherty

Audience:
THIS IS THE CRITICAL ISSUE IN THE SHOW

The audience role is pivotal.

The Moderator invites the audience to "participate" by asking questions of the Team (or the panel, if they wish...or themselves). It's largely irrelevant due to the demographic of the invited audience. These must be D or E types, preferably jobless, living off state benefits, travellers or the itinerant homeless with a fair smattering of drunks and smack-heads. No graduates.

At the end of each presentation, panel questions and their own five minutes of participation, the audience will hold up their placards. One side of the placard is red, with the words "Elitist Bastards", and the other, green, with the legend, "Marginally Less Elitist Bastards"

As all the contests will result in split decisions by the panel, this audience vote will be the decider and the Team with the most "green" placards will be the winner.

Prizes:
The winners of the grand final will be permitted to increase their fees to £50,000 p.a. with no restrictions on entrants. This will be achieved by a special members bill introduced by "Two-Brains"Willetts. The losing finalist university will be able to go to a maximum of £30,000 p.a., with a restriction that 1% of entrants should be "a little bit poor".

Revenue Streams:

Website advertising: A/B/C1 targets

Site visitors encouraged to join as "University Challengers"  - members of the site - funded email shots from advertisers

TV Advertising: A/B/C1 targets only

20.00 - 23.00 Weekly 45 minutes - three breaks

Network Distribution: Target markets in India & Japan

(c) 2011 FourCol TVTrash Inc.

End of the Silly Season...?

There've been a few stories in the press this week that have made me tut.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE....MOVE ON....

What a load of crap this is with England's Rugby World Cup Squad. "Jonno", the coach, summed up the tabloid feeding frenzy perfectly: "Rugby players go out for a beer after the match - shocker!" Bears shit in the woods etc. I can understand why the red-tops joined in, though. Features of the "story" were: English professional sportsmen got pissed abroad / Boisterousness and play-fighting / Husband of royal totty with face in another woman's cleavage / Dwarf-Tossing.

Dwarf-tossing? In New Zealand? Hobbit-tossing I could understand now that Peter Jackson's movies have finished and left the dimuntive hairy-footed shire-dwellers out of work for a while so they need to make a few quid, possibly by being tossed.

Bunch of Tossers?

I think phone-hacking is reprehensible but...wouldn't it be fun to hear Mike Tindall's call to Zara after the details broke? Actually, no. It wouldn't. It's much more fun to imagine our own versions. I'd cheerfully introduce Madame Guillotine for the royals and toffs of this benighted nation but I've a suspicion that Mrs Tindall is probably cut from a different cloth and might not deserve the short, humiliating trip in the tumbril. I really hope she laughed her tits off and then lovingly kicked her husband in the nuts for being such a twat. I mean, if he's no oil-pianting and has managed to snag the delicious Zara...make up your own headline.

But it all sounded like a pretty good night out. There's no story here, provided, of course, that our drunken, fighting, cleavage- slurping, dwarf-tossing heroes go on to unceremoniously dump Roumania and Scotland in the same manner they have just despatched Georgia. All will be forgiven until we lose to someone and then it'll be "blame it on the boozie" all over again.

THE WHACKY WORLD OF PUBLISHING...

Until this week, I had nothing whatsoever against Polly Courtney, because I'd never heard of her. She's a novelist, by the way. Oh, and she used to be an Investment Banker and then gave it up (after only two years) to write novels about...er...Investment Banking and women in "The City". Her best-seller, Golden Handcuffs, I have not read. Neither have I read any of her other works, which include a novel called Poles Apart that - and I'm guessing here - might be about wives left behind in Poland while their husbands work in Germany and the UK. OK, probably not. If I want a good story about "The City" or investment banking then I can read the FT or Peston's blog and go, "Christ! Did that really happen - rogue trader dumps $2bn?" People making shit up about invetsment banking can never be more entertaining than the inconvenient truths of the real thing.

Anyway, that's not the point here with Ms Courtney. She self-published her first book (well done) and then she got a three-book-deal with Harper Collins! Brilliant! Respect! Now, apparently, she has told Harper Collins to stick the deal up their arses because, in her opinion, they are giving her literary outpourings a spin that smacks of "chick lit", based on their suggested cover design of her latest tome..."It's a Man's World". 

Courtney's New Book:
Unfairly Judged by its
Cover?

Just a minute here, Polly. You have a THREE BOOK DEAL with a MAJOR PUBLISHER and you're going back to self-publishing because you don't like the "chick-lit" appeal of the covers?  These are the covers and the publishing power that will make your books fly off the shelves and make you loads of money? Per-leeeeeze, Polly. There are writers out here (like me, admittedly) that would rip out their own spleens for a deal like that. And don't pretend that you're the next Proust. These are novels which, according to the industry stats, have a major market with....you guessed it...women!

I have little doubt that Ms Courtney will find an alternate, sympathetic publisher who will provide a cover for her books that she will find acceptable, not least as a result of this current flannel that might just make the covers of her books more interesting than the contents. I'll go and read one now so I can have the opportunity to eat my words after I've digested hers....

SHAME ON YOU...GRAUNIAD

I love the Guardian (and by that, I don't mean the disastrous turkey of a movie with Kevin Costner...I mean the lovely, lefty, liberal newspaper). I love to read Simon Jenkins's pieces. I love to get cross with Polly Toynbee, George Monbiot, Mehdi Hasan and John Harris. The SamCam pieces can deliciously funny, as are the contributions from Woolaston, Crace, Freeman, Hyde and so many others, although I tend to turn the page when I see Deborah Orr's byline. And Charlie Brooker is a blast (most of the time).

But the Grauniad lets itself down occasionally. In Guardian Weekend this week, we are subjected to a "feature" called "Who Makes Kate?" Let's all marvel at the lovely clothes that our future queen wears, shall we? Oooh, let's look at her in jeans, pretty dresses, hats and then turn the page for a graphic on what she likes, who influences her and a gratuitous pic of Diana, just in case we forgot who the Daily Express wants us to think she's supposed to emulate. On the other hand, no, let's not.

I assume that this excremental feature only appears because of the current and wholly ridiculous "Fashion Weeks" that give the opportunity to newspapers and broadcasters to show images and video clips of anorexic coat-hangers so that Victoria Beckham can make more money than her husband and turn "Harper Seven" into a brand rather than a daughter. And in the same magazine, we have at least thirty pictures of "ordinary mums" picking their kids up on the school run. By ordinary, the Guardian means Elle McPherson, Claudia Schiffer, Gwyneth Paltrow, Victoria Beckham (again) and some yank in sunglasses I've never heard of called Sarah Jessica Parker. (Why is it that Americans have such long names and more than their fair share of teeth?) School run? School photo-op, more like, sponsored by Dolce & Gabbana.

Primark's "Suit & Tie" Models arrive
for  London Fashion Week

But three hurrahs for "City Mayor of the Century", Boris Johnson, who turned up for the launch of London Fashion Week dressed in what he described as "a suit", appropriately dishevelled and without having taken advantage of a comb or a professional tie-knotter, as usual. I don't know what it is about Johnson. He should just be a bit of an upper-middle class, Old Etonian areshole but there's something that makes him more worthy than that, somehow. What could it be? Ah! I know. Intelligence - not common in politicians. That's what threw me.

Note to "Guardian Weekend" editor: Re-title article "Who Makes Kate?" to "Who Actually Gives a Shit?"


BOUNDARIES AND DEMOCRACY

More "Shock Horror!!!!"

It seems that the proposed constituency boundary changes will disadvantage Labour. Patrick Wintour suggests that "...as many as 10 million voters, predominantly poor, young or black, and more likely to vote Labour, could fall off the electoral register under government plans..." as he commented on the reports from the Electoral Commission's psephologists' "warning". Psephologists? (Psephology is the study of elections and the statistical analysis thereof - source "psephos", which is the Greek for pebble, which their ancient versions used to cast as ballots. Why do we have to have classical references to describe stuff? No matter.)

Greek "Ballot Paper" and Psephos

The point that Wintour and others are trying to make is that if/when these boundary changes are brought in, some people (those whose constituencies are changed) will have to re-register to vote, something that we citizens of the UK are not required to do by law, by the way. The panic seems to be that where boundary changes occur in the "leafy shires" that traditionally might be Conservative enclaves, the population might well seek to re-register seeing as they wish to perform their civic duty to keep Dave and Giddy in power, whereas those that are compromised elsewhere in traditionally Labour areas might not be arsed to bother.

That'll be the same people that can't be arsed to vote anyway, then?

The unlikely-named Labour man, Tristram (Hunt), said that "...this is designed to wipe the poor and the young off the political map...". Well fucking well do something about it, then, Tristram. The man from Ipsos Mori, Roger Mortimore, said, "...it is a very dramatic change and I am opposed to it...it is most likely to disadvantage Labour...". Hang on, there Roger, aren't you supposed to be a pollster? You can, quite legitimately, suggest that the changes might "disadvantage Labour" but by saying that you  are "opposed to it" might make anyone other than Labour choose to look elsewhere for their pollsters? Er...OK, maybe they do already. My mistake.

"WITNESS" WAS NOTHING LIKE THIS...

Two Amish Men Discuss Beards

It wasn't what you would call a "seminal" motion picture, but the Harrison Ford / Kelly McGillis movie vehicle "Witness" was entertaining and maybe gave some of us a romantic perspective on the Amish people of the MidWest of the United States. Their need for "plainness" which requires them to forego anything that involves bright colours and makes the chaps wear curious chin beards, are uppermost in my own memories of the film, along with their eschewing of all things involving the internal combustion engine. Oh, and McGillis naked from the waste up having an Amish "bath" while Ford looks on through a gap in a door like some pervy nonce.

This refusal to join the 20th century (let alone the 21st) has landed a lot of the Amish guys from Kentucky in trouble and some of them in jail. The local authorities in that state required the Amish to put high-visibility stickers on the back of their horse-drawn carriages and the weirdy-beardies refused because the stickers were too colourful. So the police banged them up. Still, at least the prison service were thoughtful enough not to force these "criminals" to wear the day-glo orange jump suits while inside the nick, giving them some drab ones instead. The whole point of the luminous orange sticker things is to make your vehicle more noticeable. Surely, even in Kentucky where these things might be more commonplace, I think that some hugely-bearded men in broad-rimmed hats clip-clopping along in a nineteenth century horse-drawn buggy in the highway with a queue of traffic and piles of manure in its wake...is the sort of thing most people would notice?

SILLY SEASON CONTINUEs...

It's Political Party Conference Season! (Yawn...)

Nick Clegg will be able to reprise and paraphrase one of his predecessor's most famous conference declarations:

"Go back to your constituencies and prepare to be removed from government..."

What a chump.

Dale Farm - A Completely Uninformed View

This is a very difficult issue to comment upon, so let's just get my credentials out of the way first...for what they are worth.

I suppose I'm a bit of a left-leaning liberal, but one that gets cross occasionally with Polly Toynbee but also one that would cheerfully and legitimately kick Gideon Osborne in the nuts if I was ever sufficiently proximate - something that is about as likely as SamCam offering me style advice.To complicate matters further, I have been known to agree with Liam Fox on some defence issues and with Michael Gove on the "Free Schools" programme but throw darts at my Theresa May effigy.  A union member for almost forty years and son of a Father of the Chapel, I have worked for capitalists but have also volunteered in the arts and currently do so for the National Trust. Such is the diversity that affects so many of us and confuses us as to where our loyalties and prejudices may lie. 

But I simply don't get this Dale Farm stuff. It's left me cold...

I have never met a "traveller", as far as I'm aware. I suppose that's because I've largely "stayed put" whereas they travel about, as their nomenclature might suggest. Forgive me if I've got this all arse about, but the beef at Dale Farm appears that the residents want to put aside their "travelling" and "stay put". The evictions that are going on seem to mean that they will have to move (i.e."travel" a bit) thus, to the likes of me that don't get it, they'll be doing what they're supposed to do?

I apologise to any Travellers for the following on the basis of my ignorance:

This is what I understand about the issue (and none of my information comes from the Daily Mail). The Dale Farm site is in the Green Belt. The Travellers own the land. There is no planning permission for what they have placed there as residences. The council officials in Basildon have spent ten years (and a lot of public money) on legal processes to determine the legality or otherwise of the Dale Farm settlements. The courts have decided that the settlement is not in line with planning regulations. The courts have determined that eviction is an appropriate response within the law. 

But there are variables, inevitably. The arguments on either side appear to be unsolvable. Stand-offs have ensued, complicated by individual histories and currencies. Nobody can win, it seems. Agencies with or without portfolio or genuine interest wade in and out. Councillors, politicians, activists and the Travellers themselves appear to be set upon conflict rather than mediation and resolution. The press take both sides. And then there's the Human Rights representatives from Europe and the UN who appear to be concerned about "race" issues and, at the odder end of the argumentative scale, an accusation of "ethnic cleansing". 

I know (well, I don't actually "know" - I've just listened to and read stuff from commentators that I trust) that many of the Travellers' families include small children (and probably some large ones too), elderly and/or infirm relatives and other vulnerable people who will be compromised by eviction and having to "travel" off somewhere as a result. John Baron, the Conservative MP representing the constituency that covers Dale Farm, has acknowledged that the "vulnerable" cannot be left without necessary and, in some cases, life-preserving services, and the Basildon Council leaders have made the same assurances. 

Baron also makes the point that, within his constituency, there are no less than one hundred sites for people in the "Traveling Community", which he maintains is one hundred more than neighbouring constituencies. I don't know whether that's true because I can't be arsed to research it. It's probably a little bit true, otherwise he'd be a bit of a git to come out with a stat like that if it was false.

The Council and Baron have been at pains to point out that the Travellers have been "encouraged" to "apply" for alternative accommodation through the systems that operate in every borough in the land for those that are "homeless". It's often a crap alternative, even to sleeping rough by some accounts, but it's there nonetheless and, for the most part, provides the basic bits that Maslow might have recommended on the first tier. 

So the processes are in place to attend to the legal and social issues that might pertain. In simple terms: the Council evicts you and the Council is required then to house you. 

Complications. 

These are the bits that I apologise for unequivocally if I've got them wrong:

1) If you buy some land that has no planning permission for anything at all, the chances are that you'll get it pretty cheap. If you then go ahead and do things on that land - whether it's building things, living on it, grazing sheep or installing a waste-disposal facility - then people are going to get pissed off because they might have wanted to do something similar but, being law-abiding citizens, they didn't. Or they did, but it cost them a shed-load more money to acquire the land with appropriate permissions.

2) Having done things without legal permission, you get all uppity and attempt to use your "culture" and "race" to justify what you have done and then, having lost the legal arguments, attempt to employ Human Rights conventions and the UN Agencies with briefs on "ethnicity" when to the uninformed observer like me it looks like you're bucking every system going...it might be tricky to get public support.

3) You are about to be evicted and the local authorities are duty bound to provide, at the very least, accommodation for your most vulnerable people and seek to provide alternative accommodation for everyone else that is genuinely homeless and then some of you say that the provision of that alternative is not acceptable because it's "bricks and mortar" and not in line with your "culture" to live anywhere that is a "permanent"structure"....my guess is that that attitude might further denude public support. You add to that the "fact" that there are 4,000 other people who are not Travellers looking for council accommodation in Basildon and if you were to be given that accommodation in preference then public opinion would be turned even further against you and your comrades at Dale Farm (if that were possible).

4) You're Head of the Council / Local MP and you have the Law on your side. Decisions are taken, resources are mobilised. And like Michael Douglas in the movie "Falling Down", you stare at the camera and ask..."I'm the Bad Guy?" Yes,  you must be, because you are throwing babies and geriatrics out of their homes and if one of them was to die in the next few days then you may be guilty of corporate manslaughter or maybe even "crimes against humanity" because there's a UN inspector there watching your every move as you "ethnically cleanse"the "travellers" like some latter-day Milosevic.

5) You're Eric Pickles and have just settled down after your third curry of the evening. Is this Dale Farm issue part of your portfolio, you think, after seeing your parliamentary colleague, John Baron, hauled off for questioning over his complicity in genocide? As Secretary of State for Local Government and Communities, you try to judge how the Dale Farm issue might not be a Local Government or a Community problem but conclude that it probably is. However, as the police are all over the place and there are foreigners in abundance from the UN and the ECHR, then it's best if Theresa and/or Bill take any initiatives. Time for another curry before bed, then...

OK - Having set out my daft, uninformed understanding and opinions on the problem...here's my equally stupid and uninformed solution:

Let the Travellers stay where they are with the following conditions:

a) Get a brilliant QC to draw up a document granting rights to the "Travellers" at Dale Farm to stay where they are in perpetuity and that their right to do so is so completely individual that it does not have any precedent for "Travellers" anywhere else in the fucking Universe. 

b) Give the Dale Farm residents retrospective planning permissions for their residences and apply all the appropriate charges for council services (backdated to the dates of occupation) - just like everyone else has to pay and see if that makes the whole problem go away, along with the caravans.

c) Eric Pickles to tell everyone from the ECHR and the UN to "Fuck Right Off" and then take them all for a brilliant curry / TexMex in Birmingham or Bradford. I recommend Bradford - best curries in the world.

d) To drive home the political acceptance of this madness, SamCam and Ffion Hague should spend a week in the caravans at Dale Farm getting "all ethnic" with the community there. Great TV? And an opportunity for Sam to develop some ideas on accessories - I can see her new SamCamTravellerRange bags and shit hitting the boot sales very soon...

Points a) to d) above prove that there is no realistic solution to all of this. And, if there isn't, then this same thing will be repeated throughout our country for years to come.

But what do I know - my opinions, as I have already said, are uninformed.