Cash For Honours.

The Government, allegedly, has been selling Honours to its dwindling number of wealthy supporters, in order to stave of bankruptcy of the Party. There is nothing new in such accusations; or in the actuality. Lloyd George sold peerages to businessmen, and to salve the consciences of husbands cuckolded by his intemperance. Wilson at least had the good manners [and sense] to wait until his last Honours list to hand out the goody bags. But in recent years we have lost the habit of expecting, or demanding, better.

What makes it so galling this time round is, as you might imagine, spin.

The police are conducting a lengthy, detailed, and extremely sensitive investigation into corruption that goes to the very top of the legislature; the Prime Minister has been interviewed twice, Lord Levy [responsible for party fund-raising!] arrested twice. If charges are eventually brought to court, it will shatter the remaining, frail faith in Britain’s democratic processes; it will be our Watergate.

And yet No. 10 has put forward an anonymous aide [and these things, we can be sure, don’t happen without detailed planning] to complain about the delays in the investigation, led by Assistant Commissioner John Yates. The investigation, says the spokesman, “is blight on all politics, not just on the Labour Party”. Consequently, No 10 says it has no credence in what the police say, because the investigation has taken some five months longer than anticipated, or desired.

Assistant Commissioner Yates is compared by the pro-government media to Kenneth Starr, the monomaniacal Special Prosecutor hounding Bill Clinton out of the White House, like a modern day Witchsmeller Pursuivant. This seems at best unlikely; at worst a deliberate attempt to pervert the course of justice by questioning the professional authority of the investigating detective.

Perhaps, we humbly suggest to you, the blight poisoning the democratic bloodstream of British politics is the politicians themselves. Things are bad enough if they can’t recognise that; they are totally lost if politicians are maliciously undermining the forces of law and order.

Power, they say, corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Andrew Mishmash

The World Will, Eventually, Be Your Oyster.

The rail companies serving [and that’s a word I use only through habit, not as an indicator of high-quality service] London have announced that they will start to accept Oyster pay-as-you-go cards on local train lines.

They will pick up Mayor Livingstone’s offer of a £20 million investment in the “complex” gate equipment in order to achieve this. In other words Ken has bribed them, with your money, to put in equipment to take even more of your money.

And we are especially pleased to hear that the train operators will “work to have it operational by January 2009”; so it might be ready in two years’ time.

My prediction is that it will ‘accidentally’ fall behind schedule; and then the Minister for the Olympics [and believe me, there will be one] will have to step in and hand over another pile of your cash to get it finished.

You heard it here first.

Andrew Mishmash