The heartbreaking spectacle of civil servants stumbling around in the darkness with their trousers around their ankles has been evoked by a news story from Birmingham. Aiming to save energy – and presumably to cut down on lazy staff taking long loo breaks – those running the West Midlands government offices have installed a timer… Continue reading Flushing out energy-wasters
Read moreThere have been some frankly unhelpful comments following the launch this week of the UK Space Agency. Some people have even suggested that it is little more than another pointless government initiative – Planet Quango, a less-than-heavenly body, mainly consisting of inert gas. “Space is money,” Lord Mandelson is reported to have said, but there… Continue reading Space is the place for blue-sky thinking
Read moreWith Mr and Mrs Cameron, Mr and Mrs Clegg and Mr and Mrs Brown lining up with their kiddies as competing models of perfect, well-scrubbed domestic contentment, it has been a good moment to receive a sharp lesson in reality from the past. Michael Foot and his wife Jill Craigie were not quite as trim… Continue reading A grown-up lesson on marriage
Read more“Simplistic” was the word used by the Advertising Standards Authority to describe an ill-fated government campaign to raise awareness of climate change. It was a polite way of describing the smoothing out of inconvenient truths in order to deliver a hard-hitting message in a series of public service announcements. But it was the advertisements themselves,… Continue reading The march of playground morality
Read moreOfficial policy statements from Whitehall tend to be bland and full of sincere-sounding generalities, but just now and then something important, perhaps even revolutionary, can be glimpsed in their pages. So it is with the latest paper from Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), The Noise Policy Statement for England, which was… Continue reading Don’t drown out awkward information
Read moreFor the first and I very much hope the last time, I share a problem with the celebrity hardman Vinnie Jones. We have both recently laid ourselves open to the charge of what is now known as “ableism”. Jones was reported to Ofcom when, during an interview for Celebrity Big Brother, he referred to the… Continue reading Stand up for the right to cause offence
Read moreIn the great establishment vs the people clash which is developing around the fate and future of Jon Venables, there will be only one winner. Ministers will argue the letter of the law, but then that is what they did over MPs’ expenses. Judges will warn of the dangerous consequences should Venables’s identity become known,… Continue reading Jon Venables and a case of mob morality
Read moreWhen farmers involved in large-scale developments protest tender concern for animal welfare, it is prudent to assume that they are up to something. When they make promises of bringing money into the community, one should become even more wary. In their rough-hewn way, they are schmoozing us. Any moment they will be promising to plant… Continue reading Factory farms, welfare and a load of bull
Read moreThere are few professions quite as innately snobbish as publishing. In the world of books, two areas of potential snootiness, the commercial and the literary, combine to create a feudal hierarchy of brutal divisiveness. The system flourishes from generation to generation because those absorbed into the aristocracy quickly and effortlessly assume the attitudes of… Continue reading Hail Hilary, the scourge of literary oozers
Read moreHere is an idea for one of the country’s many courses in creative writing or broadcasting. To illustrate the terrible, corrupting effect of cliquishness and publicity on talent, students would be asked to analyse the careers and cuttings of a group of media types in their sixties who used to lunch together at Bertorelli’s three… Continue reading Will Martin’s gang ever grow up?
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