Day 3238: Mr Mark Reckons named 65th most powerful person on Earth

Thursday:


The new 2009 Forbes Power List has been published and the two persons from Great Britain on the table of the World's 67 most powerful people (apparently one for every one-hundred million humans) are the Prime Monster Mr Frown and our very own Mr Mark Thompson!

I've got that right, haven't I?

Clearly, it really WAS a VERY GOOD blog post.

OBVIOUSLY this is only the list of the most important HUMAN BEANS. I eagerly… and modestly… await the list of the World's most important ELEPHANTS…


…still waiting…



…still waiting…



…still waiting…


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Day 3229 (again): THE PRISONER 42nd ANNIVERSARY: The Schizoid Man

Tuesday:


Time in the Village is meaningless; time in Daddy's reviews doubly so, so I shall time-warp you back a week. And speaking of doubles…

information

No more psychology, no more "don't damage him", now the Village really starts messing with heads, in this classic "double agent" ploy with a cunning double-bluff twist. Is salvation all in the mind?

The Prisoner wakes up to find that he is now left-handed, moustachioed and Number 2's new best friend, Number 12, brought in on a special assignment to break a particularly recalcitrant prisoner to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance: Number 6.

This new Number 6 – in the end he turns out to be an agent calling himself "Curtis", so I shall refer to him as that throughout to try and cut down the confusion – immediately suggests that this is all a plot to break down his identity so that in the end he will tell all. Which, in a way, it is.

Curtis then proceeds to best the Prisoner at all his favourite pastimes: shooting, fencing, fisticuffs. Not surprising, really, when the Village's crude electric aversion therapy has him thinking he has to use his weaker left hand. Number 2 tries torturing Curtis with the Mind Rubbers while the Prisoner looks on. But then the Prisoner thinks of a better idea: he's been working with another Villager, Alison, on a mind-reading act, and he's sure that she will be able to tell who's who, as only the real Number 6 is "simpatico" with her. Naturally he flunks the test and Number 2 tells him it was a very silly idea and that he's only reinforced Number 6's sense of identity.

Alison, of course, is betraying him, but inadvertently she also provides his way out: another of her hobbies, photography, provides the evidence that too much time has passed, and with the illusion slightly cracked, he starts to regain his memories. One zap from a faulty standard lamp and he's regained his proper handedness too, and can cheerfully beat the truth out of Curtis. Then, when Rover helpfully eliminates his double, it's time to turn the tables on Number 2, as the Prisoner pretends to be Curtis and hopes to get the next chopper out of there.

There's just one snag: while Alison could tell the real Prisoner by instinct, Number 2 could tell the real Curtis too, and the Prisoner ends up going nowhere.

what's your number, please

Things have clearly advanced in the Village, and they are now willing to start using rather more invasive techniques to break the Prisoner, here physically conditioning him; he, however, presented with an opportunity, is still trying to escape, something he will try only once more before "Fall Out". For these reason we see this as the start of the four-story "second phase" of the Prisoner's battle with the Village, and hence after any of the "first phase" stories that we've watched so far.

The other stories from this part of the series are "The General", "A, B & C" and "Many Happy Returns"; why do we make this one first?

Well, "Many Happy Returns" is another "game changing" story, like "Free For All" and, as we'll see, after that the Prisoner has good reason to redirect his efforts from escaping to destroying the Village. Therefore we shall make that the last one of this sub-sequence.

"The General" and "A, B & C" are clearly linked as they both feature Colin Gordon as Number 2 and – uniquely – the opening exchanges of "A, B & C" are amended to "I am Number 2" instead of the more usual "I am the new Number 2". This, more than anything else, suggests that those episodes, even though they were originally shown weeks apart and in the "wrong" order, are not just connected but consecutive.

"The Schizoid Man" mainly stands alone. Things get more complicated if you take into account the dates… but only if you are going to take any calendar in the Village at face value (as if you can take anything at "face value" in "The Schizoid Man"). If you did, then this story starts on 10th February, after which the Prisoner spends several weeks being brainwashed and re-educated to be left-handed before waking up on… 10th February again. The fact that he's not surprised by this suggests that every day in the Village is 10th February, or at the very least he's used to dates being arbitrary. The fact that these dates flatly contradict the dates in "Many Happy Returns", the only other episode with dates, just adds to the impression that the calendar is pretty useless for "dating" the episode.

However, at the conclusion the Prisoner – trying to bluff his way out as "Number 12" – has a striking exchange with Number 2.

Number 2: "the General isn't going to have you shot"

The Prisoner: "we'll see when I make my report to him"

Number 2 [puzzled]: "that's a rather odd thing to say"

The implication being that the General isn't a person, but also that the Prisoner hasn't considered this possibility. Now, as it happens – spoiler alert – that's not the sort of mistake the Prisoner would be expected to make after the events of "The General". So we can arrive at an order for these stories that goes: "The Schizoid Man" (which is before) "The General" (followed by the same Number 2 in) "A, B & C" and (concluding with the last great escape story) "Many Happy Returns".

the new number two

An astonishingly young Anton Rogers here plays Number 2 as an ambitious young turk, clearly on the up and clearly out to make a name for himself by breaking the unbreakable. He's very gung ho, and "into" his role in the scheme here – and interestingly it isn't his scheme (compare with Leo McKern's Number 2 failing in "The Chimes of Big Ben" and being told "it was a good idea").

This Number 2 is a more than competent actor – but then spies have to be, don't they – putting on a matey, clubbable persona for his interactions with the-Prisoner-as-Number-12, seemingly capable of improvising quickly within character around "Number 12's" attempted proof with the Alison, first looking nervous about the suggestion, then berating "Number 12's" stupidity when it "goes wrong".

In character, he's contemptuous of pen-pushers and their pensions, and occasionally witty – his suggestion that once he's finished "he won’t know whether he's Number 6 or the cube root of infinity". But he clearly likes things to be ordered and predictable, and gets angry when they don't go to plan: when the Prisoner disappears in the night, and again when it seems his extremely valuable prisoner has been accidentally Rovered to death. Defeated, though, he seems relatively phlegmatic.

Having said that, the "going wrong" is clearly scripted, and he's much less good at covering up his growing suspicions when the Prisoner missteps in his bluff as Curtis.

There are a few moments, his reflective "old man" interactions with the Prisoner when he believes him to be Curtis, that seem written for an older actor, one who could have spent a few years knocking around a bit and be a contemporary of someone of McGoohan's age; interestingly he starts to be more matey – more "in character" again – once he starts to doubt that this is Curtis, and he starts to throw in test questions.

Ultimately, he's just not very interesting, a high-flyer fast tracked from middle-management perhaps, but not a power in the way earlier Number 2's have been. To be fair though, having two Patrick McGoohans on the screen is enough to force any number of people into the background.

follow the signs

To start with the crushingly banal: 12 is 6's Double.

What is more interesting is that under all this, Number 2 makes a significant victory as for most of the episode the Prisoner actively asserts that he is Number 6.

"I am Number Six," he says, "it is you who are doing the claiming!"

What he should say, of course, is that the other man may claim what he likes, but he is a free man.

And we have Alison, Number 24, who is 12 doubled too, though unusually for the Village she gets called by name. She is also the first pretty woman we've seen whom the Prisoner hasn't rejected or chased away. In fact his relationship with her is surprising in several ways: friendly, almost paternal, he doesn't just seem relaxed in her company but used to it, as though they've been friends now for some time. This might suggest a longer than usual gap between the last episode (in our case "Free For All") and this one during which he seems to have not just settled down but actually started to engage in an almost normal social life in the Village.

I'd suggest that this is a consequence of his total failure in "Free For All": he's realised that his "run like the blazes, first chance I get" approach is getting him nowhere and costing him a lot, so he's paused for a reassessment.

But trust from him is unusual, especially of a woman. It would certainly be in keeping with the Village's tactics over the last several episodes (as we watched them) to have deliberately introduced a young woman to him as either part of this specific scheme or their longer term plan to exploit his chivalry but, for the same reason, it seems to be highly out of character for him to have taken to trusting her.

What seems most likely is that he comes to trust her because he believes he's found an empirical test of his instinct to trust her: their uncanny trick with the Zener Cards.

Remembering that it's the Sixties and mind-over-matter is "in", for the purposes of this episode, the possibility of a mental "rapport" or "link" between two people is treated as, if not an out-and-out fact, certainly a reasonable possibility. It's not a straight acceptance of telepathy; the Prisoner himself says it's more complicated than that, and it's more implied that they are – subconsciously – tipping each other off with non-verbal clues and body language, as in the moment where he turns with his lighter ready for the cigarette she has prepared behind his back.

This then is his test, a much more complicated version of what he tried in "Checkmate": he believes certain things about Alison, and some of those are supported by the way she seems to respond to him, so he therefore believes other things about her too.

It's never actually clear whether they've corrupted her, probably while zapping the Prisoner with electric sticks, or if it was a set it up from the very beginning. She could have been selected (with or without her knowing it) on the basis of a particularly empathic personality or suitability to form a bond with the Prisoner or her entire mind reading act could be, well, an act.

But the implication of the cigarette moment, and later her telling "Curtis" that she wouldn't do it again clearly knowing that this is the Prisoner pretending to be Curtis, is that the link is in some way genuine and that it was the scene in the Green Dome, where she miscalls four out of five of the Prisoner's cards and then aces Curtis's run (easily done with a doctored deck and a memorised sequence, or prearranged signals between Curtis and the stooge or even a cunningly placed mirror or two), that was faked.

Which makes this another "win" for the Village in their longer term game: they've taken something genuine and used it to create more distrust in him generating further alienation.


One of the classic "Prisoner puzzlers" is why Rover kills Curtis. Both men, superficially identical, give the correct password but the village Guardian murders one of them, fortunately the "right" one. Why?

Alex half in jest suggests that it's because Rover is really pissed off: he's just been set off in pursuit of an empty Mini Moke, the guard dog literally chasing cars, the first time he's actually seen to make a mistake, and wants to take it out on someone.

My suspicion is one of logic: if both "Number 6's" have the password then Rover can infer that Curtis has broken and betrayed the Village. Punishment is swift, as the Judoon might put it. Or maybe Rover thinks it's the Riddle of the Osirians: one of these mummies always tells the truth and one is lying; since the Prisoner always tells the truth he gives the right password, but since Curtis is always lying… Of course, the Prisoner then convinces Number 2 that Rover has just assassinated their top prize and Number 2 orders the Guardian recalled immediately. You can, if you like, imagine Rover bouncing up and down in impotent fury confined to his lava-lamp for the rest of the story.

As for picking the right one to squish, well that's not hard: the Prisoner and Curtis may look identical to us, but who is to say how Rover perceives them? It might "sniff" DNA, or "taste" the electrical activity in their brains. As a semi-mystical blob of "the Unknown", it might as well see "souls" for all we know.

If there is a problem, it's the way that Curtis collapsed like a wet paper bag five minutes earlier: he goes from smug control to punch up to quivering wreck in the space of a single scene. Dramatically, after his confident self-assurance in the role of "Number 6", this makes no sense at all. Of course, metaphorically the Prisoner has, like Austin Powers, recovered his "mojo" and Curtis folds before it; in the episode's own language, and as flagged up earlier by Number 2's Haitian controller, the Prisoner has reclaimed his "soul" along with his right hook – ironically his soul is restored rather than stolen by a photograph.

who is number one?

Once again, Patrick MGoohan shows why this series really is all about him. Here he gets to play ego and super-ego to himself.

(Which means Rover as the id – a great big blobby death-wish, a formless beast driven by emotions, anger, lust, fear – is surely just as obvious, not least when "the id" finally – not to mention literally – does what it always wanted to and overwhelms "the super-ego".)

Oh, come on, all that "subconscious connection" stuff and you're not thinking Freud?


McGoohan as Curtis is both exaggerating and commenting on the Prisoner's usual mores and morals: when he's in control he is more arrogant, more obnoxious, more in control; when he loses it, he is more pathetic. Meanwhile McGoohan as the Prisoner struggles to realise his proper self until he confronts and overcomes his remembered trauma. Only by integrating the two – "becoming" his other self – can he escape from his imposed reality. And of course he hasn't integrated himself, which is why he doesn't get away.

"The Schizoid Man" would be a very clever twist on an almost clichéd spy drama trope: the doppelganger. But McGoohan's almost self-satirising performance lifts it to be a superb episode of "The Prisoner" as well. A series that screams "Who are you" from its opening titles really has to analyse its lead character.

Or perhaps it's just an excuse for McGoohan to be both characters in the punch-up for the trailer.

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

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Day 3235: Mr Frown – an apology

Monday:


That so-called “newspaper”, “the Scum” has found a whole NEW way to be OBSCENE. They’ve taken the hurt and anger of a grieving mother and USED it, used HER, as an excuse to attack the Prime Monster… for his HANDWRITING.

We KNOW that Mr Frown cannot see from one eye and has problems with the other. We KNOW that fiddly handwriting is DIFFICULT for him. Nevertheless, he – quite RIGHTLY – takes the trouble to PERSONALLY write to the families of each fallen soldier.

You can UNDERSTAND Mrs Janes’ anger. But what does “The Scum” get out of it?

Is it their point to criticise Mr Frown for not thinking much of the soldiers whose lives are lost in Afghanistan? That seems to be a particularly CRUEL twisting of the facts: he does something that is personal and unmediated – un-SPUN – and for him actually quite physically difficult. It would not be the same if he got someone else to write it, or to check it or, worst of all to TYPE it – yes, I know that’s what Mrs Janes asks for, but she is angry and hurting and being used.

Is it a legitimate question about Mr Frown’s Afghanistan policy, a policy that looks increasingly difficult to UNDERSTAND let alone support, in the light of the election fiasco? “The Scum” certainly don’t seem to be addressing any of the REAL issues: are we helping or hindering the Afghan people; does this “war” (or “occupation” really) make Great Britain safer or in fact more dangerous; can we actually WIN against the Taliban without TALKING to them; do our soldiers get the support and equipment that they need to do the job we ask of them?

So is it just MOCKING someone for making a spelling mistake? (And in fact, Mrs Janes criticises his spelling of “comfort” claiming Mr Frown wrote “cumfort” when clearly it actually a POORLY-FORMED first letter “o”, not a misspelling.) Because surely there would never ever EVER be a TYPO in the pages of “The Scum”? Oh wait…!

It is a TERRIBLE SHAME that Mrs Janes has felt insulted by what was meant to be a gesture of comfort. You can see how it must be awful for her, and how she could react with ANGER to even a kindly meant letter. Mr Frown has now phoned her to apologise and I hope this helps her pain.

I wonder though that “the Scum” does not feel the urge to apologise too. Because they’ve only made things worse not better.

PS:

In best Doctor-Who-companion style, Daddy Richard has twisted his ankle. It has BALLOONED up like… well Mr Balloon’s opinion of himself, and all he can say is: “Dear FLUFF, how did Auntie Jennie stand the PAIN!”


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Day 3229: Dave the Cave – Mr Balloon versus Lisbon and the Truth

Tuesday:


The Conservatories have made a GREAT DEAL of political capital out of their FALSE claim that the other parties promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and then reneged.

Let's be quite clear: in 2005, NOBODY promised a vote on the Lisbon Treaty, because in 2005 the Lisbon Treaty DID NOT EXIST!

But in 2007, Mr Balloon gave you a "cast-iron guarantee". Mr Balloon is the ONLY one to break his promise.

So it seems only fair that he should be completely made to pay that capital back, and to admit that he was a lying liar all along.

In fact, since it appears that they campaigned on a totally false manifesto for the European elections this year, shouldn't ALL of their MEPs resign with immediate effect?

But DID Mr Balloon admit it? My fluffy bottom he did!

Here's what he had to say for himself:

"Ladies and Bullingdon Clubbers, Proles, Earthlings.

"Yesterday in the Czech Republic, a country far away about which I now care very little, President Santa Klaus signed the Lisbon Treaty and dropped me right in it.

"I know that I promised you a referendum on this treaty. But I'm not going to give you one.

"Why not? Well, let me ask you this: when is a Treaty not a Treaty? When it's a right royal pain in my ass…umption that I will be next Prime Monster.

"Remember, as Humpty Dumpty* once said, 'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.'

"So when I say 'Treaty' I don't mean 'an agreement between nations' I mean 'something in the future, the vague threat of which we can use to frighten you into voting for us', and when I say 'cast-iron guarantee' don't mean 'a promise I will absolutely keep' I mean 'whatever will get me in the paper'.

"You see? No?

"Okay, I know, from the many public meetings I've held around the country milking this issue, that many of you will resent the fact that I am going to fold at the first difficulty and break my cast-iron promise.

"So let me make it clear that it is definitely NOT MY FAULT – no, it's Lord Blairimort and Mr Frown! They're the ones who promised you a referendum. So it's their fault.

"And the Liberal Democrats, they totally betrayed you too.

"Let me make that even clearer: ANYONE who promised you a referendum – even if it was on a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT treaty – THEY let you down; ANYONE who promised you a referendum – even if they actually voted FOR a referendum, just not the one very specific and pointless one that I wanted – they BETRAYED you.

"But not me. I offered you a SPECIFIC guarantee of a referendum on THIS specific treaty. And I'm not going to give you one. But that's not BETRAYAL; that doesn't count.

"Of course I wanted a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. But now I'm not going to give you one.

"I've argued for it, but I'm not going to give you one; campaigned for it, but I'm not going to give you one; put it front and centre in our European election campaign, but I'm just not going to give you one. We have voted for it in Parliament. But YOU won't get a vote, because we won't give you one.

"I've banged on about the Prime Monster and his broken promise at every opportunity. So now I've broken mine too.

"I believe it ranks alongside the expenses scandal as one of the reasons that trust in politics has broken down. And that's why I can happily break my word, content in the knowledge that you should never have trusted me anyway!

"I always said that if this happened, I would set out immediately how a Conservatory Government would respond. And if you give me five more minutes, I can see what Mr Vague has scribbled down on the back of this fag packet.

"Ah yes, let us offer you some PLATITUDES instead.

"FIRST! If we win the next election, we will amend the European Communities Act 1972 to prohibit, by law, the transfer of power to the EU without a referendum.

"Of course, if MY Government can amend the European Communities Act, then any future Government could amend it back again. But hopefully you won't notice that.

"This is a major constitutional development.

"Of course, we are opposed to a Written Constitution. So, as usual, this promise isn't worth the paper it's not written on.

"SECOND! Instead of a referendum, I promise you we will NOT be having a referendum.

"I just don't think it's right to concoct some new pretext for a referendum simply to have one for the sake of it.

"That wouldn't survive serious scrutiny. Like most of my ideas.

"A made-up referendum might make people feel better for five minutes… because they'd use it to vote against an unpopular Conservatory Government. But my job is on the line… er… is to put together a plan that lasts five minutes years, and I don't think a phoney referendum should play any part in that. At least, not any more, now we've lost the chance of hawking a Lisbon vote on you.

"Let me repeat: a Conservative government will guarantee a referendum if there is any attempt to transfer further powers from Britain to the EU. Just like we did when Mr Grocer Heath took us into the EEC, or when Queen Maggie signed the Single European Act or when Mr Major-Minor signed the Maastricht Treaty… oh for fluff's sake…

"THIRD! As well as making sure that further power cannot be handed to the EU without a referendum, we will also introduce a new law, in the form of a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill, to make it clear that ultimate authority stays in this country, in our Parliament.

"This is not about Westminster striking down individual items of EU legislation. It's about inserting MEANINGLESS and UNENFORCEABLE clauses into legislation that will do nothing but irritate our European partners and undermine our negotiating position in Europe – after all, why will anyone take our contribution seriously if we are CONSTITUTIONALLY saying 'but all that only applies to you not us'

"These changes would ensure that the breach of trust committed by this Labour Government could never happen again.

"Those two words - never again - will be on our leaflets.

"And also in all the leaflets of our opponents, as in: 'You can NEVER trust the Tories AGAIN'

"We will make sure that the British people remember who it was that broke their promise – Labour, and who it is that will stop this happening again – the Conservatories.

"But these measures are all about distracting you from my BIG BROKEN PROMISE.

"They don't deal with the problems we are facing today, which will now be made worse by the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

"In essence, these problems boil down to… Barry Legg, Bill "Petty" Cash and Daniel Hangman.

"A Conservatory Government will address some of these problems… by giving jobs to these malcontents and blowhards that will shut them up. At least for a bit.

"A Conservatory Government will grovellingly fail to obtain THREE specific guarantees from our European partners.

"First, social and employment legislation.

"We will want to negotiate the return of Britain's opt-out from social and employment legislation in those areas which have proved most damaging to our economy (or at least most damaging, aside from the massive recession caused by rich greedy bankers), for example the aspects of the Working Time Directive which are causing real problems for our Fat Cats and Slave Drivers. Er.

"Second, we will negotiate over the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Because I for one have no understanding of what "fundamental" means. And who in Great Britain could possibly want human rights? Never mind that signing up to the European Declaration of Human Rights is a PREREQUISITE for membership of the Union… what pinko came up with these so-called "rights" anyway? What do you mean, Churchill?

"The third area where we will negotiate for a return of powers is criminal justice.

"Remember, we voted against the European arrest warrant and if we'd had our way, the 7/7 bomber could have got away to Italy and, and… has Mr Vague checked all this?

"Anyway, we can't go letting the people of Iceland sue our banks for just bringing down their economy, can we!

"I recognise that these are highly complex areas, where we need to think through the practical details with great care. And I'm confident that when it turns out all THESE promises turn out to be as worthless as my cast-iron guarantee of a referendum on Lisbon we'll have found another way of blaming someone else, probably a faceless, nameless Eurocrat who I can make up on the spot.

"So, yes, I believe we will be able to negotiate our way out of a paper bag. And if you believe this guff, then I believe that you will believe anything!

"In conclusion: People are fed up with the endless lies and spin, they just want to know what we can achieve and how.

"Well WHAT I can achieve is being Prime Monster, and HOW I can achieve it is… with MORE lies and spin!

"That's what this is all about.

"And never mind giving the British people a policy on Europe that they can actually believe in."

*PS: HUMPTY DUMPTY

'You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,' said Alice. 'Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called "Jabberwocky"?'

'Let's hear it,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'I can explain all the poems that were ever invented – and a good many that haven't been invented just yet.'

This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

'That's enough to begin with,' Humpty Dumpty interrupted: 'there are plenty of hard words there. "BRILLIG" is that BRILLIANT moment when a cad is caught full in the headlights – the time when you begin BROILING him for dinner.'

'That'll do very well,' said Alice: 'and "SLITHY"?'

'Well, "SLITHY" means "lithe and slimy." "Lithe" is the same as "active." You see it's like a portmanteau – there are two meanings packed up into one word.'

'I see it now,' Alice remarked thoughtfully: 'and what are "TOVES"?'

'Well, "TOVES" are ConservaTOVES: they're something like badgers, because they look they look fluffy on top – but something like lizards, as they have a nasty underbelly – and something like corkscrews, for the way they twist their words around and around.'

'They must be very untrustworthy creatures.'

'They are that,' said Humpty Dumpty: 'also they make their nests in the Sun – also they live on cheesy publicity.'

'And what's the "GYRE" and to "GIMBLE"?'

'To "GYRE" is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To "GIMBLE" is to make holes like a gimlet.'

'And "THE WABE" is the current affairs, the news and what have you, I suppose?' said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.

'Of course it is. It's called "WABE," you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it…'

'And a long way beyond it on each side,' Alice added.

'Exactly so. Well, then, "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another portmanteau for you). And a "BOROGOVE" is a thin, shabby-looking, rampant egoist who conceals their more frothing tendencies in service of their ambition - rather like Mr Michael Borogove, that is: a respected members of the Shadow Cabinet or "tit"'.

'And then "MOME RATHS"?' said Alice. 'I'm afraid I'm giving you a great deal of trouble.'

'Well, a "RATH" is a sort of green pig, a different sort of rampant egoist, one quite unable to contain their volcanic fury or "wrath": but "MOME" I'm not certain about. I think it's short for "from EU" – meaning that they'd lost their only policy, you know.'

'And what does "OUTGRABE" mean?'

'Well, "OUTGRABING" is GRABBING at the headlines to express (most probably faux) OUTRAGE, something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you'll hear it done, maybe – down in the Millbank studios yonder – and when you've once heard it you'll be QUITE content.'

(with some apologies to Mr Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)

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Day 3227: Postman Pot

Sunday:


We know a SONG about this, don't we children:

"Postman Pot, Postman Pot, Postman Pot and his black and white… opinions about drugs policy…"

Minister for Misuse of Science Drugs, Mr Alan Johnson and Johnson must be wishing for a No More Tears formula today, or at least a no more RESIGNATIONS one, as by firing the Nutty Professor, he has gone from being next leader of Hard Labour to merely the next failed Home Secretary faster than it takes to say "My word, how very RED-in-the-FACE you've gone, Mr Johnson and Johnson; have you taken any DRUGS for that?".



The root of Mr Johnson and Johnson's problem is NOT that the Nutty Professor has criticised his policy; the problem is that the POLICY makes not the remotest HOOT of SENSE, and he knows it, and everyone else knows it and he KNOWS that everyone else knows it.

I am reminded of the story of the EMPEROR with NO CLOTHES ON. And what was the MORAL of that story? Yes, the little boy who pointed out that the Emperor was in the nuddie got taken away to Guantanamo Bay and tough new laws enforcing Imperial Attire were enacted, because pointing out that people in power are fluffing idiots is never a healthy career option.


Increasing penalties, spending millions on police snatch squads, re-classifying everything as Class-A triple-star with skull-and-crossbones and dagger-dripping-with blood, these are all the clear signs of someone who is SOFT on drugs.

Yes, SOFT – the Government's "war on drugs" policy is the SOFT option, it is easy, lazy pandering to headlines in the redtops, and it causes HARM, it unnecessarily criminalises a whole generation, it encourages robbery and burglary, it wastes police resources, it puts people at risk from impure sources of supply, it supports a culture of violent criminal gangs both here and in poverty-stricken parts of the planet (usually countries that, by an astonishing coincidence, regularly get bits of their territory EXPLODED by Americaland).

It is, on the whole, EXTREMELY stupid and, yes, SOFT.

The TOUGH stance on drugs is tackling the problem head on.

What IS the problem? The problem is that for some unearthly reason politicians and meeja curtain-twitchers think that it is ANY business of theirs what other people choose to do with their bodies.

This is where the HORSE RIDING comes in.

Horse riding is a VERY, VERY slightly dangerous activity that people choose to participate in. We don't ban it. In fact, people would probably think of it as HEALTHY and FUN because of the associated physical exercise, fresh air and social interaction. And yet people can and do get killed doing this.

And so I present you with the rave.

Was the Nutty Professor RIGHT to compare "tragic accidents involving harmless innocents" to the deaths of "drug-taking-fiends" who go "raving" on "ecstasy" (©all newspapers)?

Well, what are the numbers:

About two-and-a-half million people regularly go horse riding.

About half a million people regularly take ecstasy.

If there's about TEN deaths a year attributed directly to each activity – as the Nutty Professor claimed – then you can do the maths: it works out that horse riding has a risk of death of 0.0004% (or four in a million) and ecstasy taking has a risk of death of 0.002% (or twenty in a million).

So (tabloid speak again) ecstasy FIVE TIMES more DEADLY than Horsies! Or, more rationally, you are actually QUITE UNLIKELY to die of either.

The POINT, as made in this study, is that the meeja OVER-REPORT deaths attributed to "drugs" and in particular ecstasy in order to PORTRAY "drugs" and in particular ecstasy as an EVIL COCKTAIL of DEATH, with your average teenager playing Russian Roulette every time they pop a party fun pill.

The truth is, you are far more likely to drop dead of PARACETEMOL.

In fact the BIGGEST killers appear to be Diazepam and Temazepam ("The Housewife's Choice") but nice Middle-Class ladies numbing themselves into oblivion don't seem to be on the Daily Fail's agenda. Odd that.

And any examination of the HISTORY of drug policy in Great Britain would suggest that more than likely it was MEEJA-DRIVEN moral panic that CAUSED the explosion of first heroin then other drug abuse by going all "moral high ground" on the doctors who were actually TREATING the at-the-time actually VERY SMALL number addicts back in the Sixties.


So, to return to the Emperor with No Clothes On, the Nude Secretary – do not SHUDDER; even Mr Johnson and Johnson has an, er, Johnson – he says:

"You cannot have a chief adviser... campaigning against government decisions."

Was the Nutty Professor WRONG to speak up when he disagreed with the POLICY? Should he have kept QUIET, not published his piece about the relative HARM?

NO.

As a scientist, he has an absolute moral DUTY to present his findings, whether they support the policy or not; whether they support his OWN beliefs or not. It is actually VITAL to the scientific method that ALL results are presented, otherwise you introduce BIAS into the shared pool of data

This is in DIRECT contradiction to the OPERATING systems of Hard Labour.

Their MP Mr Tom Price, appearing on the Westminster Hour, went as far as to utter the STAGGERING suggestion that independent advisors should be bound by collective responsibility.

The Labour Party, it seems, have come up with a new DOCTRINE for independent advisors: "ministers decide and advisors AGREE".

As Dr Woo once said: "the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they change the facts to fit their opinions".

Whether Mr Johnson and Johnson is very powerful of very stupid, I will leave it up to you to decide, but if we can't face the facts, we can never see it: the "War on Drugs" has been a TOTAL FLUFFING FAILURE.

PS:

My favourite comment, though, must be that of Mr Stephen of the Glenn:

"New Government Science Policy: Anyone who claims that the Earth is NOT the CENTRE of the Universe will be taken to the EDGE and thrown off!"



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Day 3222: THE PRISONER 42nd ANNIVERSARY: Free for All

Tuesday:


For obvious reasons we actually watched this on WEDNESDAY, just before Mr Andrew Britain's History of Marrmite. It's a jumbled up, reactionary, aren't-they-all-just-the-same view of politics… and so is "Free for All".

Here's Daddy:

information

Written by "Paddy Fitz" aka Patrick "Paddy" McGoohan, and make of the Fitz what you will, "Free for All" sees the Prisoner enter its "barking mad" phase. It is election time in the Village, and Number 2 persuades the Prisoner to run against him for the job of chairman with a promise that if he wins "Number 1 will no longer be a mystery" to him.

This turns out, like all too many "campaign promises", to be rather more nuanced in outcome than the Prisoner might have hoped.

(He ends up essentially alone in control – see if you can work out where this is headed.)

"Do you intend to run?"

"Like blazes, first chance I get."

He should have stuck to his first answer; agreeing to this election may have been a bad mistake. First he is shocked to see that the Villagers already have anticipated his decision and his campaign posters are ready instantly, even if they react to his manifesto for freedom with hilarity. Then he is invited to the formal final meeting of the outgoing committee who blank-facedly refuse to answer his questions before a maniacal Number Two 2 orders the Prisoner sent for testing as punishment for this "breach of etiquette".

"Testing" involves a nice cup of – laced – tea with a kindly Civil Servant who more than a little resembles Michael Palin's character in "Brazil". After which, a blissed out Prisoner finds himself mouthing the nostrums of the Village and winning the approval of the crowd.

With everything going his way, the Prisoner seems to become more and more distressed: trying his crudest escape attempt yet – by boat, see my remarks about the sea last time – getting dragged back by Rover; turning to drink, finding an apparently garrulous Number 2 in the hidden drinking den, only to get another dose of the Village's brain juice instead of a slug of the good stuff. Each of these humiliations sees him returning to Village double-talk even stronger than the last.

Victory, when it comes, is a landslide, with even Number 2 throwing in the towel, pinning on the rosette, and handing over the control room in the Green Dome. But being able to push the buttons doesn't really mean he's in control. Step forward the real new Number Two to, literally, slap him down.

"Will you never learn?"

Even without mentioning the surreal discovery of four be-sun-glassed Villagers sat around watching Rover like a television or a guru, you have to ask yourself: "what the Hell does all that mean?"

what's your number, please

This isn't, obviously, the first time that the Village messes with the Prisoner's head, but here they stop pussy-footing around with psychology and start using chemicals, drugging and brainwashing him at least twice. This is a marked step up from their previous practice, even if they insist that they don't want to "damage the tissue".

For his own part, the Prisoner also escalates things, trying to seize control so that he can free all the Villagers, not seeing that there's an obvious contradiction in that:

"Obey me and be free!"

And clearly "Free for All" is a major turning point. It was certainly an important episode to McGoohan.

For these reasons we put "Free for All" as the climax of the "early" or "trying to escape" phase of the series.

Elections have been referred to before but clearly there haven't been any, so we can guess this is a later story than "Arrival" which doesn't really help us, but also "Dance of the Dead" where Number 2 says "we're democratic, in our way".

There's a bit of a puzzle: in "Dance of the Dead" the Prisoner doesn't recognise the Town Hall; yet in "Free for All" he doesn't seem to know where to find it – going to the "Free Information" board in order to look it up. These seem contradictory; I'm going to say that it seems slightly more likely that he learns of the Town Hall in "Dance of the Dead" but, since it won't let him in except under special circumstances, he doesn't bother to work out the direct way there from his residence (he follows Number 42 there from the bandstand and later Number 2 takes him there from the beach). Or maybe it moves about.

We're also told the elections are annual so, big assumption that that's not a lie, we say that he's been in the Village less than a year.

In his address to the crowd, the Prisoner promises (among other things) to discover who are the watched and who are the warders. To me, that seems like an acknowledgement of his defeat in "Checkmate", an admission that he needs to find out from control because he can't work it out for himself. Couple that with the Count in that story chiding him for not realising that some of the "prisoners" are actually guards and we infer that "Free for All" must follow "Checkmate".

Then there's the Prisoner's reaction to women, clearly well documented by now as Number 2 refers to knowing his prejudices when assigning Number 58 as his election staff. Previously we've seen him faced off with a woman who is in charge ("Dance of the Dead"), a woman who follows him around ("Checkmate"), and a woman who deceives him ("The Chimes of Big Ben"). And now we complete the picture with one who does all three.

the new number two

Ah, now this is a tricky one. There are in fact two possible candidates for who is this week's Number 2: Eric Portman who's in the titles, wears the badge and is the Prisoner's rival candidate in the election; and Rachel Herbert, the crazed-seeming maid-cum-lady-driver whose badge reads 58 until she discards it at the end leaving herself with Number 2's rosette and indeed Number.

Was she really Number 2 all along?

She is obviously right at the centre of the plot, watching the Prisoner from up close and subtly driving him (and sometimes not-so-subtly: how did someone "new" know about Number 2's secret drinking den, then?). He knows, because by now he's totally paranoid, that "Number 58" is a spy, although it doesn't seem to occur to him that she might in fact be the boss. Her made-up-sounding foreign language is a clever blind: it's so grotesquely over the top that it throws off his critical thinking. It's a stunning performance, all wide-eyed and childlike enthusiasm, making her sudden turnaround all the more impressive, stunning even when you know it's coming.

And at the end, she is a strong and powerful figure, dominating and patronising the Prisoner, positively regal in the reveal of her stood in control with the Number 2 rosette proclaiming her true identity, almost up there with Mary Morris.

Contrast that with Eric Portman's more world-weary figure. Now a lot of that will be part of the "act" – most obviously made clear in the magnificent "drinking den" scene.

But there are other scenes where he is not putting on a show for the Prisoner, where he seems nervous and under pressure, notably when taking instructions over the phone. We infer that it is Number 1 on the line, though it's not the big red "Number 1-phone" we see later, so it's not impossible that it's Number 58 aka the real Number 2 giving him his orders.

When in the Council Room he condemns the Prisoner for "testing", he becomes frenzied, almost unhinged, repeatedly banging his gavel as he sends the Prisoner down, down, down. It can't all be an act as he's later, over the phone, chastised for it and apologises.

follow the signs

I have to admit, I find "Free for All" a very difficult episode: it looks very much like it ought to mean something more, but that meaning persists in slipping through my fingers.

On a superficial level, what, exactly, does the Village get out of this exercise? Is it simply trying to put him under so much stress that he cracks? Do they think that proving some abstract point about the nature of democracy versus government will tip him over the edge?

And yet surely he cannot be so naïve as to believe that a prison, no matter how psychedelic the conditions, would actually have a system in place for one of the lunatics to take over the asylum? He must realise that this is all a ploy. Is he genuinely just playing along while waiting to think of a better plan? It's hard enough trying to spot where he's under the Village's brain control and where he's coming out of it again.

This lack of proper plot logic tends to sharpen the crudity of the allegory, make me less willing to forgive something that is trying so hard to be clever that it may just end up being very dumb indeed.

Alex, too, finds it a really weird mix, primitive and advanced at the same time. Bits, like lady Number 2's somewhat crass "my regards to the homeland" (reminiscent of the "my new masters" remark in "Arrival"), seem to be unpolished, first ideas about how this works; but there are other bits, like gentleman Number 2's sly encouragements as the Prisoner harangues an unmoved crowd, that are far more sophisticated.

"Free for All" has the word "allegory" loitering like an enormous neon elephant in the room. The need to make a point heavily outweighing any request that the plot make coherent sense.

Our "everyman" hero goes into politics to try and make things better for everyone, but ends up looking and sounding just like the regime he seeks to replace; once he is in power he discovers he is a powerless as he was before. Is this profound or profoundly naïve?

Remember, when McGoohan says this is how things work in the Village, he's not saying this is how they work in the World; he's saying this is how they work in a World that is wrong.

You can't just dismiss this as unsophisticated political analysis: it remains true today that this view of politics is held by a great many people and leads to alienation and extremism.

The Prisoner's democratic victory is overturned by apathy – the Villagers worshipping Rover – and by violence – the mechanics who beat him up. That's not just a crude reference to the way German democracy fell to Hitler, but also a warning.

Along the way, there's a sly pop at the press: every question is answered "no comment"; every answer turned into rhetoric for the status quo, except when the Prisoner says "mind your own business" which is rendered as "no comment". Identical twins 116a and 116b appear as the press-photographer and newspaper boy, while the journalist himself is 116, perhaps suggesting they are all just drones or perhaps prefiguring the Village council, alternating men in stripy tops and women in single colours, all numbered 2a, 2b, 2c and so on. (And the council chamber is a sight: like a rocket silo, with the Prisoner on a dais in the middle surrounded by the silent, unresponsive council, while Number 2 in person sits, gavel in hand, at the big desk in front, though behind him raised up is a throne on which sits a tall pyramid surmounted with a glowing eye like an Illuminati symbol standing in for Number 1.)

The Prisoner retains our sympathy throughout, driven to run away, driven to lash out, driven to drink it's clear that it's "the system" (here represented by spy-thriller tropes of drugs and brainwashing) that is warping his character. If anything, that is a plea for greater understanding of our elected representatives, not condemnation of them.

Nevertheless, it would be true to the series to say that democracy cannot represent the individual. No matter how we vote – Labour, Liberal, Conservative, None-of-the-above – we cannot all win simultaneously; there has to be compromise and sharing or someone loses.

There's an argument, a big argument, to be had about how much we share power: that is, how much power we allow, say, the government to have. When government takes more power, does that mean more or fewer people are winning? But that isn't the argument here. The Village and the Prisoner both have extreme positions: the Prisoner doesn't believe in compromise; the Village doesn't believe in sharing

who is number one?

It has to be Eric Portman for the character arc he plays, starting off the undisputed master of the Village, keen to have an opponent in this election because, as the Prisoner puts it, everyone votes for a dictator (in the end, everyone does) through the funny cruelty of him egging on his opponent's speech, down through the madness of the Council to the final helicopter departure, knowing that he is playing the role of someone playing a role.

We return to that scene in the cave where he pretends to be a broken old man, sharing little secrets and indiscretions, telling the Prisoner there's no surveillance. And the fool believes him. And then, with Prisoner mickey-finned on the floor, he sloughs off his avuncular, drunken persona as easily as he shrugs off his blanket. As Alex says: both actions leave him "cold".

Oh, and he's developed the ability to teleport. He speaks to the Prisoner on the telephone and appears on the television clearly at home in the control room in the Green Dome. But the instant the Prisoner hangs up on him, he's at the door, the Mountain coming to Mohammed.

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

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Day 3221: Conservatories – if they had a PLAN they might be DANGEROUS

Monday:

The Conservatories were made by Maggie
They revolted…
They evolved…
Now, they look human
There are many copies…
…but only one brain cell
And they have a plan.

Fortunately, any plan that involves putting Master Gideon in charge of the economy really ISN'T a very GOOD one, as he demonstrated again this week by successfully outraging the City AND everyone else at the same time with his silly ban-the-bonuses scheme. For starters, why target the HIGH STREET banks, when the really OBSCENE bonuses are paid out to the City wheeler-dealers in MERCHANT BANKS? Does Gideon even know the difference?

Nor do Master Gideon's figures appear to add up. When the Centre for Economics and Business research are suggesting that the total bonus pot will amount to (a still pretty whopping) six billion quid how does restricting the cash payment produce a much MORE whopping TWENTY billion extra for business?

Anyway, paying out SHARES – instantly convertible into cash for anyone who, oh I don't know, WORKS on the STOCK EXCHANGE – does NOT promote a LONG TERM interest in the bank's wellbeing. What you actually need to do is to reward people with share OPTIONS, that is to say a plan where they will get some shares in the FUTURE, maybe three or five or ten years time, so it is in their own interest to stick around and make sure that the bank makes a lot of PROFIT in those years and doesn't take any ludicrous RISKS or they won't get their money.

And, slightly more esoterically, paying out bonuses in shares rather than cash does NOT amount to "free money" – the value of those shares has to come from SOMEWHERE, they aren't just magicked out of the air, and in this case it comes from depleting the value of all the OTHER shareholders' shares. Or more specifically, since WE own those banks, OUR shares; Master Gideon wants bonuses to come – once again – out of the taxpayers' pockets.

But REALLY bonuses are only a SYMPTOM of the problem. People get very CROSS about them because they look so huge and unjustified – mainly because they ARE huge and unjustified – but the real problem is the culture in the City that is all about making a FAST BUCK, profiteering at the expense of investors and taxpayers off of the implicit Government guarantee that if their risks go belly up, the Treasury will foot the bill.

Or, as Mr Vince "the Power" Cable put it:

"These bonus proposals are short term, stop gap solutions designed to stem
public anger but which fail to get to the heart of the problem."

So, as long as Master Gideon, the Conservatory Shadow Minister for Adding Up, is – like the CYLONS – unable to count past twelve, you wouldn't want to put any LONG TERM investments on the Conservatories, would you?

But, look out! Here comes Mr Tim Montgomery, of Conservatory RestHome, hoping to paint the town blue for a generation.

How is this Thousand Year Reich to be achieved?

He has a three stage scheme:

First, to recruit a broader coalition of support, which he compares to the "Reagan Democrats", by appealing to the aspirational working classes and to the people he calls "values voters", i.e. the socially concerned middle classes or "Liberal Democrats" as they are often called. The key to this is "tax relief for the lower paid" which means poaching Lib Dem tax policy – as well as Lib Dem voters – because clearly Gideon isn't going to think up a winner on his own. He's not even ashamed to say it's to try and turn votes, rather than out of any sense of fairness or rebalancing the tax system.

The second stage is "creating conservatory institutions" by which he means Mr Michael Gove, the Curious Cove's, wheeze to create independent schools for indoctrinating I'm sorry educating hundreds of thousands of voters in the right way. Nice.

And stage three is "disabling hostile media institutions" which means breaking up the BBC and bankrupting the Grauniad.

The fundamental DOUBLE-THINK of two-faced Conservatoryism shines through. He almost admits as much himself:

"We made the point (sometimes too often) that there was nothing incompatible between a tough approach to immigration and a generous policy towards the poorest people of the world. Nothing incompatible between support for traditional marriage and a respect for gay couples. Nothing incompatible between investing in our own defence and worrying about the arms trade".

Or, as Mr Jeremy Hardy once put it, nothing incompatible between singing hymns to Mr God in church in the morning and dancing naked for a Black Sabbath to Mr Satan at midnight, and I see no contradiction in that.

But in spite of that, you can't REALLY fault the first one, since building a bigger coalition is something that all of us in SERIOUS political parties try to do. But two and three seem to me to be deeply scary and authoritarian things to be planning.

Obviously it was the JESUITS who said "give me the child and I will give you the second-, third- or fourth-term Government" and they were WELL KNOWN for their fluffy Liberal decentralization… or indeed NOT!

And while it's LONG been debated whether the is an intrinsic BIAS at Auntie Beeb – with the answer being whoever is in Government thinks the Corporation is biased against THEM – the idea that there is an institutional left-wing tilt to the PRINT media is well beyond PARANOID and off into MONOMANIA.


Is it REALLY the case though that the next election will be as he puts it a "REALIGNMENT ELECTION"?

It seems to me that there WAS a fundamental realignment in 1979 – look at ME with the ancient history! – when power moved from Big Unions to Big Finance. The state shifted her favours from large, heavily industrialized and nationalized sectors to City-based gambling. PEOPLE didn't really get a look in.

Queen Maggie expressed it as a "home owning democracy", and the emphasis was definitely on "owning". The "new coalition" promised oodles of wealth – an economic miracle – but it was a SILLY promise based on a FIB because it was all built on BOOM and BUST as we KEEP finding out to our ever-mounting COST.

That "ruling coalition" (between the City and the Civil Service) has been in charge ever since, even if the name on the brass plate at Number Ten keeps changing. Replacing Mr Frown with Mr Balloon won't make a JOT of a difference, and the bonuses will KEEP ON being paid.


That's why we need a REAL realignment, one that smashes up the cosy club, and cuts the city and the state OUT.

That's why we need the Liberal Democrats.

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Day 3218 (again): THE SARAH JANE ADVENTURES: The Mad Woman in the Attic

Friday:


It's all TERRIBLY exciting this week, as Dr Woo himself will be dropping by for his old chum Best-friend Sarah's wedding to that rotter from the adverts who doesn't pay to be privileged!

By way of a TRAILER, here is a flashback to last week's carnival ride of JOLLY DESPAIR! Here are Daddy Richard's thoughts:

Apparently, this two-parter has earned the joint-highest appreciation index to date, a well deserved reward for writer Joe Lidster. Joe, who wrote this and the memorable episode "A Day in the Death" from Torchwood's second season, seems to be cornering the market in "regrets": a signature style is a tragic figure looking back, with flashbacks, on the disastrous decision that brought them to their current, usually dreadful, pass.

In this case, rather shockingly, it's one of our youthful heroes: a now-aged and abandoned Rani looks back on an empty life from the year 2059. This is heady stuff for a children's show.

We all have days when we are frustrated or belittled by our nearest and dearest, when we find their enthusiasms exasperating, or when we mistake their interest in someone else for excluding us. I dare say many of us have even wished to be left alone once in a while. WE don't really mean it, but what if someone granted that wish. That's the concept behind this week's story, almost fairy-story-like in its simplicity.

The framing device, set in the future, sees a local teenager, Adam, come exploring Sarah Jane's abandoned old house, only to discover the self-styled "mad old woman of Bannerman Road", namely Rani Chandra, alone in the attic.

She tells him the story of she's been alone since an ill-starred day fifty years ago, and we follow her through all the simple things that she – and in fairness her friends too – got wrong. Luke and Clyde are chatting online with Maria in America: they don't fail to include Rani but enthuse too much to her about the "brilliant Maria" so she feels left out, with an underlying sense that she feels second best, like she's Maria's inferior replacement (which is a clever riff on the "new girl coming into the show" to generate extra empathy with the audience who may also be feeling that she "took Maria's place"). When Sarah Jane pooh-poohs her suggestion for an investigation – typically in character for no-nonsense Ms Smith, and also typically in character she later recognises she's been dismissive – then Rani steals off for an adventure of her own.

Lured back to her old home town of Danemouth by an e-mail from her one-time friend Sam, a lonely orphan who has recently stopped communicating with her, she agrees to investigate a "demon" haunting a closed down funfair. Rani rightly deduces that the demon is actually a lost alien, who turns out to be a girl called Eve who is being looked-after by the caretaker and her mysterious Ship, who appears to speak from mirrors (yes, just like the Magic Mirror in the Disney "Snow White"). What Rani fails to realise is that Eve has dangerous powers which she cannot properly control, and Rani's interference threatens to unleash them.

There is an interesting moral question that's not really picked up on but it informs the feel of the whole show: Eve takes people who are homeless, lonely and makes them happy though playtime. But it takes their will away. We would label that "bad" but it's not her intention, and – if she's a utilitarian – she may well not even see it that way.

What is particularly wonderful here is the way that the story properly grasps the series' central idée fix that "the universe is wonderful and terrible at the same time". Eve is both wonderful and terrible, neither she nor her Ship are actually evil, but they do have, as I say, an alien morality that skews nicely away from what we might expect; they are literally fey, like fairy-folk they are perilous for mortals to be near. And for once you can understand why anyone would want to be in this world of prophetic time-seers even with all the danger that comes along with it.

Given that the title itself is a literary reference (to Mrs Rochester in "Jane Eyre", or possibly to the "Cracker" episode of the same name), there's some pretty heavy referencing going on: Eve comes from a race of time-sensitives (see "Warrior's Gate") who were caught up in "a war" (obviously the Time War, see in particular "The Unquiet Dead") and faced "extermination" (guess who!). And that's even before we get to the flashback clips (a device which itself is a reference to "Mawdryn Undead" and many others) where we get to see – whoo hoo – actual old Doctor Who clips from the third and fourth Doctor eras. And of course "he is returning" and "the darkness" allude to the prophesies in Doctor Who's 2008 series (go directly to "The Fires of Pompeii") or maybe the similar prophesy in "Planet of the Dead" – the clip from "Planet of the Spiders" is also a visual reference to "there is something on your back".

Meanwhile, Harry, the fairground caretaker, is played by Brian Miller, aka Mr Lis Sladen, who last appeared in Doctor Who (alright Doctor Who proper) in "Snakedance", also playing a Carnival worker. So that's a reference too.

And, getting self-referential, the conclusion sees Eve's new family taking a familiar shape – but, as Alex remarks, if Eve is Rani, Harry is parent-figure Sarah, computer-in-the-wall Ship is Mr Smith and fish-out-of-water orphan Sam is Luke, then where is their Clyde analogue?

Showing Sarah her future is a great idea, and knocks her back just the same way that seeing her past did in last season's "The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith". It's almost a pity that the pay off will come almost immediately, as it might have been nice to have that hanging over us for a little longer.

On the other hand we do get the final resolution of the long-running "K-9 in a cupboard" plot, releasing the tin dog to take a bigger part in the adventures now that the BBC have permission to do so, it would seem. "So you'll be staying," says Mr Smith. "Oh good." Brilliant.

If anything there is too much good material, as it does slightly squeeze out a decent resolution. The major twist, that Ship deludedly grants Rani's unintended wish, and strands her in a world without Sarah-Jane, comes too close to the end, meaning the "I'm really here to set things right" resolution is rushed, almost as an afterthought.

If I might propose a solution, I'd have used a little non-linear story-telling: bringing the twist up to the front of the story and having Adam trying to get old-Rani to tell him the background. If we start with the illusion that Ship is malevolent, then the twist becomes that she's actually just as hurt and confused as Eve. Adam could then explain this to old-Rani who from that realises who he must really be.

We finish with "mad woman in the attic" Rani being replaced by "happy granny surrounded by family" Rani, which is another of the series' touchstones – the need for family. This too is rather more fairy-story than science fiction, the idea that timelines can be casually rewritten like this not really being in keeping with the Doctor's usual philosophy. (And it doesn't bear too close an examination in logic either; given that we can reasonably expect Sarah-Jane and gang to save the world again in the not-too-distant future, having Ship edit them out of existence would surely mean old-Rani wouldn't have a planet to stand on!)

But in fairy-story logic, this is just right: the ill-starred wish gets you into trouble and the selfless act gets you out again, which is just what happens here. Even if the order is a bit muddled.

Next time… Something old, something borrowed, something blue… that'll be the TARDIS, then. He is returning! But is the Trickster really giving away the bride at "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith".

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Day 3218: Why are people allowed to tell lies in newspapers?

Friday:


Well, I know: freedom of speech. But FACTS are FACTS. Surely freedom of speech is freedom to voice OPINIONS, where there are different ideas about things where there is NOT a known answer, like politics or who makes the best sticky buns.

It's not the freedom to make unfounded assertions that contradict known evidence.

And yes, I know some people say that there are NO facts at all, only points of view, but that's just a RUBBISH idea.

Look, I am nine: some things are RIGHT and some are WRONG.

And telling lies is WRONG.

So, Ms Jan Moir.

A week ago, Ms "Grimpen" Mire put poison pen to paper to write the article that has received more complaints than any other in the last five years. I'm sorry, I'll read that again: the article that has received more complaints than EVERY other in the last five years, added together.

A lot of people, including me and my daddies, were quite sad to hear about the sudden death of a nice young man called Mr Stephen Gately.

Ms Mire, was NOT upset – she saw an opportunity. She "wrote" [Daddy suggests the verb "daubed"] an article for her "paper" – for which she was presumably paid money – in which she not only indulged her own rather sickening fantasies about the possible deaths of other much-loved famous people, like Mr Robbie Williams or Ms Kylie Minogue, but also described Mr Gately's life as "sleazy" and his death as "unnatural". She also, with spectacular ill-grace, accused the poor boy's grieving mother of lying.

Can you imagine for just one second how that poor mummy must have felt?

The terrible news that she's lost her little boy, then the horrible human thoughts set in that something horribly horrible – drugs? murder? naughty games gone wrong? – something must have happened, then – guilty relief – the expert in charge tells you that it was a tragic tragic accident, a heart condition, the sort of "ordinary" disaster that out of the blue affects a small number of people every week. And THEN this horrible woman starts flinging the dung around, like she's picked up every evil rumour and bad thought that has floated like scum across the surface of the Internet and gigglingly printed them up like they mean something.

Can you imagine how Mr Gately's husband must feel about this? Practically airbrushed out of the coverage of the funeral already and then smeared with the implication that he went off to bed ("I've got no proof but not alone fner fner! By the way, I don't even have to underline the prurient assumption that that's BAAAAAD!") leaving his hubby to die on the couch.

What a horrid thing to do.

What I want to know is WHY, why would we even LET someone like that print a load of lies in a newspaper?

It is NOT an "opinion" to claim "there was nothing natural about this death". That is a statement about the facts: either poor Mr Gately died of natural causes or he didn't. The coroner said that he did. Ms Mire had NO grounds for questioning or challenging that assessment. So her article is just a LIE.


Now, she has written a "response" [Daddy suggests the noun: "screed"] to all the complaints.

She unpologises for the TIMING of her article, but not for the blatant LIE.

And then she tells ANOTHER lie:

"If he had been a heterosexual member of a boy band," she asserts, "I would have written exactly the same article."

Exactly the same? EXACTLY the same?

So after the sudden unexpected and tragic death of a HETEROSEXUAL young man, she would have written that: "it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships"?

It would have been BIZARRE NONSENSE to have written any such thing.

But more than that, while I would suggest that it would still be a really PRETTY STRANGE thing to say even if she had changed the wording to "the happy-ever-after myth of straight marriage", I do not for one picosecond believe that she WOULD have drawn such a conclusion from a tragedy involving a "nice straight boy".

To suggest that the first article made no link between Mr Gately's sudden death and his sexuality is A MONSTROUS FALSEHOOD. The first article doesn't say anything BUT "he died because he was gay".

Snide little innuendoes are laced throughout the piece, all with the same undercurrent:

"Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again" …unless they're gay.

"if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy" …because he was gay.

"Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately’s last night raise troubling questions" …about them both being gay.

And NOTHING links the tragic suicide of lonely Mr McGee to the tragic accident of happily-partnered Mr Gately EXCEPT that they were both gay.

(One could just as easily link Ms Mire herself to any notorious heterosexual suicide, with equal lack of any real meaning… for the most ludicrous possible example: "the death of the German Reichsfuhrer, the former longtime companion of German model Ms Eva Braun, and now the dubious events of Ms Mire's last article raise troubling questions". It doesn't MEAN anything because there is NO real connection – apart from them both receiving the support of the Daily Fail – just the SINISTER SUGGESTION of one put in your head.)

To deny that she used homophobic words is almost MORE wicked – it is the "I didn't do anything wrong!" barefaced deceit you might expect from a naughty little girl caught with her hand in the cookie jar. In anyone over the age of FOUR it is CONTEMPTIBLE.


I don't think lies like that should be allowed.

Newspapers have ENORMOUS power, but are accountable to practically no one.

Now there's a very simple and easy comparison to make: the BBC.

Ahh, you might say, but the BBC gets public money and the Daily Fail is a private company. OK, in that case the Daily Fail can pay me back my share of EVERY PENNY that it got in advertising. Because I had no choice in them getting that money, so they owe me – either accountability, or I'll take the cash.

Yes, that would be fair: either you can sign up to an accountable oversight commission, and that probably means a PARLIAMENTARY one – yes, I'll take MPs over journalists any day of the week – or you are banned from taking advertising.


So, last year, on the BBC Radio Two, Mr Russell Brand and Mr Jonathon Ross caused offence to a great many people when they made some silly rude phone calls to Mr Jonathan Sachs. (Not to be confused with Mr Andrew Sachs, the Chief Rabbi.)

Egged on by – of all papers – the Daily Fail, a record number of people (over forty thousand) complained. Mr Russell lost his job. The person in charge of Radio Two lost her job.

This year, in the Daily Fail, Ms Mire has caused offence to a great many people by telling a vicious lie.

Egged on by absolutely nobody, a record number of people (over twenty-five thousand) have complained. So, Ms Moir should lose her job. The person in charge of the Daily Fail should lose his job. Both of them, in fact.

No other outcome would be JUST.

PS:

I am indebted to Mr Stephen of the Glenn and the Cardiff Blogger for reading the Daily Fail so that we don't have to.

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Day 3215 (again): THE PRISONER 42nd ANNIVERSARY: Checkmate

Tuesday:


My Daddies have been watching telly again. This week, Mr McGoohan spends all his time OBSESSING about who is BLACK and who is WHITE. And do you know what? By the end of the show he is mistaken for one of the FASCISTS!

Funny the things they allow on television, isn't it?

information

If you think of the Prisoner, you think of playing chess with living pieces, and that means that you're thinking of this one.

Has the Prisoner found an ally? Is it the Count or the Queen or the Rook? And is there any way of telling?

The show opens with Rover. It bounces down the road, round corners and under arches, as though they decided that if the robot wasn't going to work they'd just defy the laws of physics in order to make that weather balloon seem alive.

All the Villagers freeze when they hear Rover approach, all except one, who we later are told used to be a Count. The Prisoner follows him, and discovers the chess game where he is persuaded to play as Pawn to the Queen. Suddenly, the game is disrupted when one of the Rooks decides to make up his own moves.

With the game over, the Prisoner talks with the Count who suggests that one can tell guard from prisoner by their manner. Thinking that this might just work, the Prisoner set out to take charge of a band of escapees…

there's been a slight misunderstanding

I've come to the conclusion that this should have been the third episode, not the fourth, and we should have watched it before "The Chimes of Big Ben".

Alex disagrees. He felt that, having a more complex plot, this episode feels like it has gone deeper into the Village and deeper into the Prisoner, and for that reason thought it was right to be placed fourth.

The thing that started me thinking this way is the Prisoner's brainwashed, puppy-dog love interest – at least she's interested in him. She is Number Eight, but in "The Chimes of Big Ben", the woman who says her name is Nadia is introduced to us as the new Number Eight.

On its own, that's hardly conclusive; each week there are new people with numbers we're seen before. This week Number 42 is a male gardener, for example. But the very fact that the newness is emphasised in this case could be seen as significant.

So I reassessed our reasons for putting "Checkmate" fourth.

Previously, our assumption was that the Prisoner was morenaïve in "Chimes of Big Ben" and that the betrayal at the end of that episode sets him looking for how to spot who is on which side.

That isn't really what happens, though. The idea to start trying to spot warders is actually put into his head by the chess-playing Count.

So what if it's the other way around: the Prisoner demonstrates a sharp distrust, indeed thinly-veiled contempt, to everyone in "Chimes" and in particular his paranoia about trusting the "new" Number Eight is much, much higher that it is of the Number Eight in this episode. It takes nearly killing her twice to even garner a wary trust from him. And of course they are pushing at his resistance to female company, trying to break into his gallantry response which feels more like a development on the "thrusting a woman upon him" ploy tried here in "Checkmate", a ploy which seems like a crude, backwards step, in comparison.

Other evidence: in "Checkmate" he recruits several allies; in "The Chimes of Big Ben" he tries to keep knowledge of his latest plan to the barest minimum and his escape attempt gets much further, or at least appears to get much further, even if it's finally revealed the furthest he got was the next cove.

And in "Checkmate" the Village is foolproof, they beat him by the very nature of their set up, they don't need to even try; contrast that with "The Chimes of Big Ben" where, although they nearly succeed, it's also the first time that the Village really overplay their hand, by strongly hinting – through the presence of the Prisoner's boss – that they are "our side's" Village.

You might feel that the escape plot here is more cunning than the build a boat-disguised-as-a-piece-of-art plot in "The Chimes of Big Ben" because of the clever "identify the guards from the guarded" element, and there's merit in that. But I'd say that the actual escape plan – "build a radio, contact the outside world and get rescued" – is an only-slightly-more-complicated reprise of the "get a message out; get rescued" ploy of "Dance of the Dead".

In fact, I realise now that there's also a nice bridging element to the "build a radio, get rescued by a ship" plan that connects the "find a radio" part of "Dance of the Dead" to the "build a boat" part of "Chimes": it's as though the "your world is a dream" conversation with Mary Morris's Number Two in "Dance" convinces him that the sea is the Village's weak point and he obsesses about what might be "out there": hope. That may, in fact, be a clever ploy by Number Two: surely Rover is better equipped to patrol the sea than the mountains, and the open ocean is surely more exposed to surveillance and radar than the mountains where there are places to hide (though of course there are also places to hide cameras too).

Equally, the Rook is almost "offered up" to the Prisoner as just the person he needs, the one with the technical skill required to make a radio. Coming after "The Chimes of Big Ben", where he's offered just the person he needs, the one who knows the location of the Village, you would have thought he would be much more suspicious of that. With "Checkmate" coming first, he might believe that useful people can be found, he just needs to treat them in the right way.

The Rook's claim to have been in the Village for "months" maybe longer doesn't really help us, but the Count remarks that the Prisoner must be new here, if he's not worked out that some of the guards pretend to be prisoners.

Finally, there's the "power scale": as time goes by, the Prisoner grows in strength and Number Two steadily weakens. By that measure, "Checkmate" has to be the earlier episode.

The Prisoner here thinks he's in charge, doing well, outwitting the guardians, so at the end he almost blows a fuse when he's beaten, showing temper and pointlessly smashing the television through which Number Two is taunting him before resorting to roughhousing with the Village crew.

In "The Chimes of Big Ben", he's almost worse when he nearly comes to cracking at the thought that maybe, just maybe, it's his own side that's done this to him. But he doesn't crack, and he comes through it stronger, and is able to walk away from Number Two and Number Eight with a phlegmatic shrug.

In contrast, Leo McKern's Number Two is, as I've remarked, teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown, whereas no such weakness afflicts this week's master of ceremonies…

the new number two

Peter Wynguard, normally known as the High Lord of Louche, here turns in a tightly restrained performance, powerful, unemotional and totally evil.

His delivery of the opening lines in the title sequence is Olympian, not quite so knowing as Mary Morris, but detached and cold.

He is an aesthete: immaculately manicured and impeccably polite, but he doesn't even push his own control desk's buttons with his fingers, preferring to use his brolly. And likewise he prefers to push the Prisoner's buttons indirectly, showing him a little thing here a little thing there.

There's a very Eastern, Zen attitude to him: he doesn't so much try to break the Prisoner as allow the Prisoner to "come onto the punch", to break himself. Perhaps this is what is being flagged up by the unexpected moment of him sat, apparently meditative, then suddenly exploding into a karate chop.

He makes no effort to resist when "captured" by the Prisoner and his band of would-be escapees, if anything he's disappointed at the lack of originality, meekly surrendering to being tied up, probably because he already knows it's all a sham. His explanation to the Prisoner that "I hate to disappoint you, but the Polotska's our ship" is patronising and paternal; his expression becoming a slight moue of nausea on seeing the Prisoner's fisticuffs. And then evil glee on unleashing Rover.

As the master chess-player from behind the scenes, one is left to wonder whether the presence of the butler at the chess match isn't a clue that although the moves are dictated by Number 100, the real opponent isn't a remote Number Two.

follow the signs

The one thing this isn't is a crude "life is a game of chess" metaphor. Chess is a game of pieces that move in predictable and controlled ways; "Checkmate" is patently rejecting that model: we are not pieces that you can push around; the Village's brainwashing and aversion therapy don't actually work – the "love" they create is hollow and ultimately hurtful; their deprogramming of individuality even less successful.

It's clear that the Village's masters, typical of Sixties authority figures, buy into all sorts of control crap, whether it's the behavioural determinism of B. F. Skinner seen here or the RAND Corporation's Game Theory efforts which "proved" that America had "won" the Vietnam War by the end of the Nineteen-Sixties.

Skinner took the work of Pavlov (who in fairness only experimented on animals) and applied it to people. He didn't actually advocate torturing them to make them behave better: his ideas of positive and negative reinforcement were about encouraging "right" behaviour be either giving a reward (positive) or taking away a discomfort (negative). But his work does tend to lead directly to "A Clockwork Orange" (and, obviously, what is seen here in the Rook's "hospital treatment").

Wikipedia quote him as saying:

"When Milton's Satan falls from heaven, he ends in hell. And what does he say to reassure himself? 'Here, at least, we shall be free.' And that, I think, is the fate of the old-fashioned liberal. He's going to be free, but he's going to find himself in hell."

To which the old-fashioned Liberal in me tends to reply: "well at least it won't be you making life hell for me, you demented control freak!"

Of course, the real aversion therapy is to make the Rook distrust all authority figures, and in particular the Prisoner.

The reveal of the Rook is done almost like the twist in a Whodunit except without setting up that something had been "dun". The structure of the piece ought to lend itself to a few moments of questioning: could it have been the Count? Could it have been the Queen? Could it have been Penry, the Mild-Mannered Janitor? But there's literally no time between the Prisoner realising that he's been betrayed and the "outing" of the betrayer.

It's also an interesting moment of commentary on the unreality of television. The Prisoner's response to Number Two's big reveal, as I've already said, is to snatch up an ashtray and smash in the television set – as though he's under the impression, often fostered by television, it must be said, that Number Two is looking out at him from the same set, as though it's an Orwellian televiewer. But of course it's not, and we see, from Number Two's perspective, that he can still watch what is going on.

What is almost as interesting is the way that the Queen, Number Eight, just drops straight out of the plot. Initially she's ambiguous – and almost funny with the exchange: "I've often helped other people's plans." "Then why are you still here?" "Well, none of them succeeded!" – and there's a vaguely interesting idea about monitoring her emotional state as a new way of keeping tabs on the Prisoner. Alex, however, is most disparaging about the way that cod Sixties behaviour modification psychobabble suddenly works perfectly when it needs to create the lurve. Given that the whole thrust of the series is about individualism – not to mention "brain-zapping BAD!" – and that this show in particular seems to be debunking classical (Pavlovian) conditioning, it's just a bit of a switch.

So we get a slightly disjointed "thrilling" chase with the Mini Mokes, disjointed because it's not sure whether it's interested in her pursuit or what the Prisoner is really up to and tries to do both at once. Then there's a toe-curlingly cringe-worthy sequence where she makes him cocoa and he tries to be nice about it. And then he's mean to her on the beach, finally snapping and shouting at her. But once he's taken away the magic emotion-chip pendant, she's just gone. Did they have some spare plot left over from an unmade episode that they wanted to use up?

It is, surely, a small gag though that the Prisoner adopts the role of Queen's Pawn (also the working title of the episode), as it's a sign that he is, or was, Oh Her Majesty's (Secret?) Service. Mind you, the title, "Checkmate", is a bit of a rough pun, too, as the Prisoner must literally "check" who his "mates" are.

Which brings me back to the episode's theme… Some of the Villagers wear white Number badges; some of them wear black ones. The suggestion, possibly facile, is that the producers originally thought that the inmates could wear the white and the guardians the black, until they realised that made it all too obvious when someone was a double-agent. So they muddled them up.

In essence, though, this story is supposed to be about un-muddling the badges, telling who is black and who is white. In that sense it is about real life, it's about the value judgements we make, often instinctively, about the people we know, how we pick those who are going to be friends and those who are not. It is well known that humans prejudge each other very quickly based on body language, and that is what is going on here: the Prisoner is reading people's body language… and prejudging them. Which, obviously, is why he messes up.

who is number one?

This week I want to promote a minor piece: Ronald Radd as the Rook, even though he's only another pawn in the end.

With huge, almost elemental forces of McGoohan and Wynguard moving around him, he remains the essentially human element at the heart of this story: he's the one who sweats; he's the one who does the actual work of making the radio; and he's the one who shamefacedly appears next to Number Two having sold out for all the wrong reasons.

While the Prisoner is chatting merrily with the Queen, it's the Rook who demonstrates true individuality by breaking rank and rules to stride across the board, putting himself in charge. He's punished for that, tortured for that. Which is a quintessentially human outcome.

next time…

That would be telling.

Be seeing you.

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Day 3215: Electric Dreams

Tuesday:


Pardon my Eighties flashback, but: "I like driving in my car" PLUS "Together in Electric Dreams" EQUALS have the Chinese found a way to Save the World, with a new electric car that can, allegedly, do 250 miles on one charge and up to 100mph?

Shouldn't we be checking this out with some urgency, 'cos if it's TRUE then it will be a BIG HELP towards cutting CO2 emissions*.

Just as importantly, isn't this EXACTLY the sort of thing that WE should be making? New car plants PLUS zero-carbon cars EQUALS hello new economic miracle. And that's VERY Eighties!

(*so long as you remember to use renewable for GENERATING your electric battery juice!)

PS:

Bless the BBC for their up-to-date-i-tude, but here is the Grauniad with the same story six months earlier.

And here is Treehugger at the launch a year before that!

Look, if we've KNOW about this super-whizzy long-life battery for THAT long, why the FLUFF are we not URGENTLY tooling up to match the technology?!?!?!


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Day 3213: New Words: UNPOLOGY

Sunday:


unpology (ŭn-pŏl'ə-jē): noun (pl unpologies)

1. a written or spoken statement to be used where convention or legal instruction would require a statement of regret for fault or failure

2. an insincere expression used to accentuate positive aspects in order to downplay a negative verdict and avoid admission of guilt or contrition

3. (colloquial) any New Labour ministerial statement not previously trailed in off-the-record briefings, selected newspapers or on the Today programme

viz: former Second-Home Secretary, Ms Jacqui Spliff, made an unpology in the House today in response to the findings of the Commissioner for Standards.

see also: Blairgerism


Here is the FULL Hansard transcript of what Ms Spliff had to say for herself:

I am grateful to the Committee on Standards and Privileges for its consideration of the detailed report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards following his seven-month investigation. I want to apologise unreservedly to the House, as I have to my constituents, for wrongly claiming for the cost of films alongside my broadband and cable connection. This claim should never have been made and, as the Committee notes, I paid back the claim in full as soon as it was brought to my attention.

On the issue of second home allowances, the commissioner and the Committee recognise that my London home is indeed a home. They dismiss the most usually repeated newspaper descriptions of my living arrangements, and I welcome this judgment. As the report makes clear, I sought and received written advice from the parliamentary authorities that supported my main home designation and, indeed, I spent more nights in London than in Redditch for three of the four years in question. I have never flipped my designation and I own only one home.

The Committee recognises that there is no evidence that the taxpayer would be any worse or any better off as a result of my having made a different decision. However, in retrospect the commissioner concludes that I should have used my discretion to change my main home designation. I accept the Committee’s conclusions and I therefore apologise to the House. I want to say sorry, too, to my constituents. They are my No. 1 priority, and for too long this investigation has overshadowed the work that I do for them.

So, for starters, she apologises UNRESERVEDLY for the wrongly claiming of the cost of films, and then RATHER LESS SO for the Second Home Allowance.

It should be remembered that the Commissioner for Standards, Sir Paul Lyon, UPHELD the complaint that Ms Spliff had wrongly claimed for, er, pay-per-view movies and ALSO UPHELD the complaint that she had had it away with over a hundred grand by wrongly designating her sister's spare room as her "main home".

So why the equivocation?

The report – she says – makes clear, she sought and received written advice.

Here is what that advice from the Department of Finance and Administration actually said:

"I can confirm therefore that the location of a Member's main home may not always be where their family reside. I agree with your assertion that is reasonable to continue to claim the allowance against your constituency home given your ministerial responsibilities require you to spend the majority of your time in Westminster"

But that advice was in reply to HER writing a letter to them saying (basically): "look, I've been told that I don't have to count where my family live and spend all their time as my main residence, so if I continue to claim that this spare room is my main home, that's okay isn't it?"

So essentially, the "advice" reduces to "if you say so"!


She goes on: "indeed, I spent more nights in London than in Redditch for three of the four years in question"

But that's not STRICTLY true, is it, at least not within the tolerances of MATHEMATICS.

What the Standards Committee says (point 12) is:

"On the evidence available, the Commissioner has concluded that Ms Smith spent more nights at her London home than at her constituency home between 11 May 2005 and 27 June 2007. He has also concluded that Ms Smith spent more nights at her constituency home than at her London home between 28 June 2007 and 31 March 2009."

So that's two years and nearly two months spending more nights in London and one year and seven months spending more nights in Redditch. Which is a LOT nearer to TWO and TWO than it is to THREE and ONE.


And then she adds: "I have never flipped my designation and I own only one home."

Weeeeeelllllllll…

You see, when Ms Spliff was first elected, she quite naturally designated her home in Redditch as her "main home". All fair there. In 1999 she became a minister. Yes, I know, but she did. The RULES then in play said she HAD to re-designate her London home as her main one. Okay, fair play, can't say that's her fault. But then in 2004 that rule was cancelled and she had the CHOICE to re-re-designate BACK to how it was to start with. And she didn't.

So although she didn't take any ACTION to "flip" her house, the EFFECT is the same; if she had not been a Minister, she WOULD have had to have "flipped" to be claiming what she was from 2004 onwards. As the Standards Commission says, other than becoming a Minister, NOTHING changed in Ms Spliff's circumstances, so how other than a "flip" can you describe her choice to stick with the re-designation?

Because more than anything else, it's OBVIOUS that the WHOLE POINT of scrapping the "Ministers have to declare their London home as their main home" rule was because it was clearly SILLY in the case of people like Ms Spliff. Giving her the CHOICE was an act of TRUST that she would properly declare the secondary home, NOT an invitation to maximise her allowances. It was an act of trust that she BETRAYED.


She does, kind of, sort of, reluctantly come to the word "apology" at the end of her statement, although her acceptance of the Commissioner's findings comes heavily framed with an "however" and an "in retrospect", but before that she plays her ultimate "Get Out Of Jail Free" card:

"The Committee recognises that there is no evidence that the taxpayer would be any worse or any better off as a result of my having made a different decision."

Ummm. Sort of. They do and they don't. Point 34:

First they say:

"If Ms Smith had nominated her Redditch home as her main home, she could not have claimed for the rent she paid to her sister because the House rules prevent a family member from benefiting from allowances."

Which seems pretty plain and simple: Ms Spliff got the homes the wrong way round; declared the other way around she could have claimed nothing; ergo the taxpayer was stung for the WHOLE WHACK, was out of pocket by over a hundred grand. Thank you. We'll take a cheque.

BUT, then the Committee goes on to say:

"However, she could have bought her own home in London; she could have rented a home in London from a non-relative; or from June 2007 she could presumably have used a taxpayer-funded grace and favour residence in central London, as many previous Home Secretaries have done. Any of these courses could have resulted in a different claim on Additional Costs Allowance"

She could also, presumably, have been kidnapped by space-aliens, taken Holy Orders and retreated to a Convent, or been elected Queen of the Mountains of the Moon.

Is it REASONABLE to think that ANY of these things might have happened? Or are we ACTUALLY saying that we can't work out how much the public purse has lost because the former Home Secretary might have found some OTHER way to diddle the taxpayer?

You have to ask, who signs off on this sort of TWADDLE? Who takes a fairly clear-cut double-barrelled guilty verdict and says there are "mitigating circumstances". And, in fact, who therefore concludes that the appropriate punishment for someone who has, let's just say, "inappropriately acquired" over a hundred thousand pounds of other people's money is a few grudging words of mainly self-justification?

In short, just who ARE the Standards and Privileges Committee, anyway?

Well, in accordance with Standing Order 149 para (2): "The committee shall consist of ten Members, of whom five shall be a quorum", there are ten members of the Standards Committee, five of whom are members of Hard Labour and five of whom are not.

Interestingly, though, not all of them were PRESENT when the report on Ms Spliff went through.

The meeting to decide on their response took place on the afternoon of 22 September. That's slap in the middle of the Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference, which I'm sure is a HUGE COINCIDENCE.

Nevertheless, a glance at the MINUTES of the meeting reveals that PRESENT for this discussion were:

Mr Kevin Barron (Hard Labour)
Mr Andrew Dismore (Hard Labour)
Mr Chris Mullin (Hard Labour)
Mr Paddy Tipping (Hard Labour)
Dr Alan Whitehead (Hard Labour)
and
Mr Greg Knight (Hard Labour stooge Conservatory – no, be fair, you can't blame him, outnumbered five to one and they'd have been quorate even if he'd refused to attend)

Meanwhile, NOT present were:

Mr Sir George "Very Old" Young (Conservatory)
Mr Nicholas "Bunter" Soames (Conservatory)
Mr Elfym Llwyd (Plaid Cymru)
Mr Nick Harvey (Liberal Democrat) – away at the Party Conference, what a coincidence.

And at this point I have to say: is it just ME or is that starting to look just the TEENIEST bit PARTISAN? And perhaps just the TINIEST bit SUSPICIOUS?

Maybe it's COMPLETELY INNOCENT, maybe it just LOOKS bad, MAYBE.

But – at a time when Parliament is in the LOWEST of esteem and when MPs' expenses are under the TIGHTEST scrutiny – would it not have been at the very least BEST PRACTICE to make sure that the opposition Parties were all present and correct when deciding the fate of a senior Government THIEF. Er, member.


There's a PRICE for this sort of behaviour. You can't just "stitch things up" any more, you can't just "play the game"; Jacqui Spliff may have begrudged the House of Commons even a small sign that she was sorry, but mouthing the words in Parliament isn't enough when it looks like you are getting away with daylight robbery.

People are angry about this, FURIOUS in fact.

For Ms Spliff, the backlash has begun, with over six thousand Redditch voters telling her to get gone and the campaign is already rolling to stop her receiving an undeserved peerage as a reward for failure.

Or as Liberal Democrat Peer Lord Oakeshott put it: "Shamed MPs should not stroll into the House of Lords."

But for the rest of us, the price will be paid in the years to come, because people have lost their FAITH in politics and they don't care enough anymore to demand more of their Government. If we end up electing the next truly GHASTLY Conservatory regime it'll be because most people are more interested in seeing the current bunch of crooks and shysters ejected than in holding the next lot to account.

I believe that we deserve BETTER than that. I believe that we can have a world that is actually pretty GREAT, and we don't need EITHER Hard Labour OR the Conservatories bossing us around and ripping us off.

And I make no unpologies for that.

PS:

And, tragically, Ms Spliff has immediately LOST her title as MOST EGREGIOUS UNPOLOGIST of the YEAR to Ms Jan Moir of the Daily Fail. More on THAT story later…


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