The Quiet Road

And the question is: “Name three types of people who regularly steal public money?”

It’s been a quite extraordinary few weeks in British politics. A seemingly endless series of stories has emerged revealing how British MPs have been ruthlessly and systematically exploiting the expenses system in order to syphon public money into their own pockets. Some appear to have spent as much time fiddling their expenses as they have representing their constituents… buying and renovating properties with public money and then selling them on and pocketing the (tax-free) profit. A practice so common they had a name for it… “flipping” they called it.

Completing the phrase with “… the finger at the proles” would hardly be an unfair characterisation of what was going on.

Oliver Letwin: multi-millionaire, director of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, puppy-killer, conservative MP and one of the key architects of the tory plans to slash public service spending when they come into power. Claimed over £2,000 of public money to fix a leaky pipe under his tennis court. You’d really think one of the perks of being a millionaire merchant banker would be that you didn’t have to get your hands grubby nicking money from the till? Wouldn’t you? Still, I guess he can close a hospital ward once he gets into power… he’ll save a lot more than the two grand his tennis court works bill cost the taxpayer. In Letwin’s world, that’s value for money.

One can only assume that Rothschild don’t have quite so liberal an expenses system. Strange, huh? Or maybe they do, but his first instinct was to raid the national treasury rather than his corporation. Either way it’s revealing.

It must make all those firemen, nurses and teachers so angry… they have to pay for repairs to their tennis courts out of their own pockets. And heaven forbid the chandeliers need cleaning!

Jack Straw: textbook example of the corrupting effect of power, from dedicated socialist to viciously reactionary supporter of Blairism, new labour MP and current Minister for Justice. While we rightly hold Letwin in contempt for his sordid pilfering, we can at least assume that there really was a tennis court and a leaking pipe. Jack Straw, on the other hand, claimed £1,500 for Council Tax he never paid. Seriously folks, isn’t that just outright theft? Why are we pussy-footing around this? And how come MPs can claim their taxes back on expenses anyhow? Who decided on that rule? Oh yeah… that’s right…

It’s interesting how many MPs have paid back the dodgiest of their expenses since discovering this was all going to become public. All the while maintaining they’ve done nothing wrong in the first place and they don’t actually have to pay them back, but they will all the same and they would have paid them back even if they weren’t going to be made public, honest. When Jack Straw was home secretary back in 2000 he introduced a series of tough new measures to “crack down on benefit cheats”. I don’t hear him calling for the Serious Fraud Office to get involved in this little bit of nest-lining. When questioned about this fifteen hundred quid he apparently responded; “Accountancy does not appear to be my strongest suit.” I wonder how that defence would work for the average “benefit cheat”.

He once wanted to be Chancellor of the Exchequer you know?

Douglas Hogg: 3rd Viscount Hailsham, voted “Least Likely to Ever Be Known As A Man of The People” at Eton (a great honour for him), lives on a country estate in a castle* called Kettleburgh Hall, believes the public should cover the bills. And what bills they are!

It’s worth mentioning that Hogg denies ever having claimed over two grand to have the moat around Kettleburgh Hall cleaned. You read that right. All the same, it appears on an expense claim which was paid, and he quickly “paid it back” once he learned this would all become public knowledge. But he never claimed it, see?

No. Neither do I.

He also denies that the public is paying for at least one full-time member of staff at Kettleburgh Hall, or that the taxpayer is being generous enough to cover the cost of keeping his grand piano in tune. But they appear on his expenses claim… and he’s paid them back now. They live in a different world, don’t they?

Elliot Morley: First to be suspended. I say “first” with a certain note of hope and expectation. Ex-minister under Blair, strongly in favour of the Iraq War, nuclear stuff (submarines, power stations) and tougher ‘anti-terrorism’ measures. Nice to animals though. Mind you, his respect for living creatures doesn’t seem to stretch quite so far as those who pay his wages; British people.

Of the Jack Straw school of expense fiddling (claim for stuff you’ve never even paid for). But in Morley’s case, he was claiming mortgage payments on expenses for 18 months after the mortgage had ended. That’s £16,000 over a year and a half. You’d think he might have noticed something? I know they get paid alot, and clearly they find it difficult to keep track of all that money, but wouldn’t he have noticed an extra £900 per month just appearing in his account? No?

Well, “sloppy accounting”, says Morley. Shades of Jack Straw once again. It’s lucky these guys don’t have to deal with large sums of money as part of their job or anything. Anyway, Morley has apologised and he’s paid back the sixteen grand. Good to know he still had it lying around.

Andrew Mackay: First tory resignation of the scandal — will he be the last? Let’s hope not. Was a parliamentary aide to tory leader, David Cameron, now just a backbench MP. Still got access to those expenses forms, then. Turns out he was claiming for mortgage payments on two separate properties. Uh-huh, that’s right, the taxpayer was buying this guy two houses. Just to remind ourselves, he was taking home an MPs salary of £63,291. And that’s the minimum… I assume he got a bump for being Cameron’s aide, and whatever else he brings in on the side. But at a minimum he’s earning close to three times the national average wage.

Yet he’s still spending his time working out how to get the public to buy him two houses on expenses. Other than MPs, who else could be discovered surreptitiously funnelling their employers money into their own bank-accounts and not get fired? And not get arrested?

Mackay had to know that claiming a “second home allowance” on two homes not only managed to contravene the most lax set of expenses rules ever devised (impressive in a way), but was just wrong. From any moral or ethical standpoint you choose. How can he possibly remain an MP? Why the hell isn’t he being questioned by police?

Benefit cheats and embezzelers don’t generally get to escape criminal sanction by saying “sorry I’ll pay it back” when caught.

Shahid Malik: biggest claimant of all, junior justice minister, tax-dodger, landlord, safe to say not a traditional socialist. We could talk about the fact that this guy claimed more than any other MP in 2007 and racked up an astonishing £66,827 in “second home allowances” over three years (all the while renting out his “first home”). We could talk about the publicly-funded home-cinema system (apparently those stingy taxpayers would only cover half the £2,500 cost). But what caught my eye was the £65 he got the public to cough up for his court summons for non-payment of council tax.

Incredible when you think about it. Jack Straw, Minister for Justice, claiming back taxes he never paid. On expenses. Meanwhile a junior minister in his department is not only failing to pay his taxes but is getting the public to cough up for the penalties. Justice is blind. And a bad accountant to boot.

He’s agreed to pay back the £65 though. No word yet on the £1,250 for the home cinema system.

Hazel Blears: delusions of being Britain’s second female Prime Minister, objectively the most irritating woman on the planet (which makes her objectively the second most irritating person… Jay Leno just pipping her to first place), recently appeared to diss the Prime Minister by scornfully writing “YouTube if you want to. But it’s no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre”. Given that the British Prime Minister and Barack Obama are the only two politicians who’ve been in the media recently for their use of YouTube, Blears seems to be suggesting that the best use of the British PM and US president’s time is setting up a stalls in Scunthorpe or Bakersfield?

And maybe it is. Anything that reduces the number of times I see Gordon Brown’s face on my screen can’t be entirely bad, after all.

But for the first time in her entire political career — perhaps her entire life — Hazel has felt the prod of conscience. In a bewildering recent interview with George Monbiot, Blears came across as having absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever. None at all. It was a little unsettling.

And that utter lack of self-awareness was evident again when — upon hearing that her expenses might become public knowledge — she decided to wave around a personal cheque for the pesky £13,332 of capital gains tax she’d avoided by “flipping” her second home just before selling it for a healthy profit. Not that she’d done anything wrong, you understand? It was all legal and above board. But she’s paying back anyway. Now that we all know about it. And here’s the cheque to prove it.

As has been pointed out, that £13k represents “nearly three years of the state pension”. But Blears saw fit to wave it around on TV and discuss it as though it were something trivial.

Salt of the earth, she ain’t. Thirteen grand? But so what, indeed.

David Cameron: Leader of the tory party, voted “Least Likely to be Held to Account for Minor Criminal Offences Because of How Upper Class He Is” at Eton. And again at Oxford. Deserves a slap, quite frankly.

The glorious leader of Her Majesty’s oppostion has claimed £82,450 over five years. On top of his salary. And on top of being really really rich already.

I realise this is naive of me, but wouldn’t you imagine that when very wealthy people enter public service they might consider using that wealth to minimise their cost to the taxpayer? It’d demonstrate… I don’t know… principles or something? I know, I know. Naive.

Still, he’s paying back £680 of the eighty-two thousand. Not that he’s done anything wrong. Not that he didn’t deserve every single penny of that £680. He bloody well did, you know! But he’s giving the British taxpayer a discount on his services.

Now that they’ve found out how much he’s charging.

Damian Green is a tory MP in Britain. This means he’s almost certainly an enemy of social justice. In fact, his voting record places him firmly on the right of his already right-wing party. The best you can say about him is that he isn’t part of the tory religious tendency (on issues like abortion or embryology). Other than that though… he’s in favour of torturing dogs, does not support equal rights for homosexuals and counts Ian Paisley high among his political friends. Not a nice man.

So from a strictly personal point of view, the fact that he’s just been the subject of a little bit of police harrassment doesn’t upset me all that much. In fact, if people like Damian Green got harrassed a bit more by the police, then maybe they wouldn’t be so damn quick to champion the harrassment of others (his opposition to drug-law reform and stance on asylum seekers being just two examples of that championing).

So how did this harrassment manifest itself in Mr. Green’s case? Well it turns out he was suspected of releasing classified government documents into the public domain (“leaking” as it’s known). As a result he was arrested, questioned and then released without charge.

That the tory party is describing this as “Stalinesque” is the final proof (if proof be need be) that they’ve completely lost the plot. Certainly the tories aren’t above a wee bit of historical revisionism. We all know that. But are they really saying that one of the primary characteristics of Stalin’s regime was that political opponents were questioned for a few hours prior to being released? It’s 20 years since I read a biography of Stalin, but my memory isn’t that bad, surely!

Don’t get me wrong, clearly what’s happened here is a little heavy-handed and demonstrates the craven hypocrisy of the Brown administration. When it suits the Labour party they are more than willing to leak stuff to the media. In fact, they’ve got such a consistent track-record of leaking stuff that it hardly raises an eyebrow any more. It’s got to the point where the Labour government leaking information is almost considered “official channels”. That the police aren’t banging on the doors of cabinet ministers and hauling them off for questioning on a regular basis demonstrates that there’s a double-standard at work. And when a government starts to employ the police to enforce its double-standards then they really need to be replaced.

But the last people that should be replacing them are a bunch of dangerous fools who are willing to cry “Stalin” when one of their own gets questioned for a few hours and then released, but who stay silent at — and indeed support — the systematic harrassment of others.

I don’t recall the Tory outcry when police kicked down a door in Forest Gate and shot an unarmed suspect. I don’t recall the tories accusing the police of ‘Stalinesque’ tactics that day. In fact, just to demonstrate how divorced these fools are from reality, how utterly self-serving in their outlook, a Tory spokesman has described Green’s arrest as “unprecedented in its heavy-handedness”.

Unprecedented? Really? What complete tossers those tories truly are.

Eon is a German-based (edited from “UK-based”… thanks to John B in the comments) energy company that powers a large slice of the British electricity grid. They employ a variety of technologies to achieve this but appear to have settled upon coal as the fuel of the future (ironic, really, as the continued widespread use of coal is a great way to help destroy the future). A massive investment is about to be made in building the first new coal-fired power station in Britain for decades, at Kingsnorth in Kent. This must be strenuously opposed.

Eon naturally spend quite a bit of money on public relations and have employed people to convince us (though mostly to convince the politicians) that so long as you preface the word “coal” with the word “clean” it is rendered benign. It makes me wonder whether bioterrorists could escape prosecution by insisting in court that they’d filled the envelopes with “Clean Anthrax”.

– Do you deny sending packages filled with anthrax to politicians?
– No your honour, we do not deny this, however we’d like to point out that we used Clean Anthrax.
– But did the politicians not die?
– They did, your honour, but you must understand that our anthrax was “Antidote Ready”.
– Antidote Ready? Please explain this…
– Well, we sent the anthrax secure in the knowledge that at some unspecified future date we would be able to develop an antidote…

Not that I wish to claim that Eon are bioterrorists. Even I admit that describing CO2 emissions as a biological agent would be stretching things a little.

“Eco-terrorists” would be a better phrase I think. Though that appears to be already in use, to describe those who seek to oppose the destruction of the environment by maniacs like Eon.

For more about Eon and about why each mention of Eon is linked to NoNewCoal.org.uk, check out this post over on Merrick’s blog.

Update: It might also be worth pointing out that Eon is sometimes written E.On or occasionally E-On. Just so you know.

As you may have read elsewhere (given how long I’ve been away from this place, chances are you’ve already read about most of the stuff I’ll be covering over the next couple of weeks), the complete membership list for the British National Party (BNP) has been leaked and published online (there’s some question about the legality of linking directly to the list, but I’m fairly certain I’m allowed to point out that it’s been published on Wikileaks, and is therefore one cat unlikely to be rebagged any time soon).

The list includes full names and addresses as well as telephone numbers, email addresses and — for many members — all manner of other additional information (age, profession, hobbies, etc.) as well as the occasional comment added, presumably, by the database administrator. My personal favourite of these comments is “No ‘promotional material’ requested. Concerned about his job”.

Oh dear.

Like most people who’ve seen the document, I immediately searched the text for various postcodes. With over 13,000 names on the list there’s a fair chance, after all, that I’ve had a BNP member or two as a neighbour in the past. In fact, during my time in England I had no less than nine addresses (as well as a brief period of no-fixed-abode) and it seems was never more than a mile away from a hardcore racist. Even when I lived in a small village in Hampshire.

Two geographical oddities stood out though. Firstly, I was bemused to notice that there are two members who live in Ireland. I presume they are ex-patriot Brits rather than Irish citizens who’ve decided to join the ultra-right British nationalists. Ex-pats, eh? There’s another word for them, isn’t there? Now, if I could only remember it… ah, that’s right: immigrants!

I don’t know; they come over here, steal our jobs……

I noticed the other geographical oddity when I checked to see if there were any BNP members in London NW11. I lived there for two years. Lovely place. Better known as Golders Green. And it turns out there is one. Only one, I grant you, but even so.

For those who aren’t aware, Golders Green is the heart of the London Jewish community. Something tells me there’ll be the tinkling of broken glass on Ravenscroft Avenue sometime soon.

Yeah it’s funny, but there’s more to it than that

I’m not going to deny the fact that I’m finding this whole debacle very amusing. When a far-right organisation with openly racist policies screws up in such a spectacular fashion it’s hard not to laugh. And it does appear to have been a case of shooting themselves in the foot. It was a disaffected member who published the list, not some shadowy left-wing conspiracy. However, neither can I deny that I’m somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing.

On a general note, it demonstrates the dangers of centralised databases. How long will we have to wait, I wonder, until the first disaffected employee of the UK’s National Identity Register skips town with a copy of the biometric details of everyone in the country? I don’t know how much that kind of data would be worth to, for example, a Moscow crime syndicate but I suspect it’d be enough to make it worthwhile for our hypothetical disgruntled IT contractor.

And before anyone says, “oh but that couldn’t happen ‘cos the Identity Register will be far more secure” let me point out that only a fricking idiot believes that they can create a 100% secure database. Especially one that has to be accessed by a whole range of different services on an almost continuous basis. In fact, for a bunch of reasons, I’d put money on the National Identity Register being fundamentally less secure than the British National Party membership database.

That, however, is far from the extent of my unease regarding the publication of this data.

Firstly, it’s a safe bet that some of the people on that list are not BNP supporting racists. I notice, for instance, that there are several “family memberships” that include the names of quite a few under-16s. I wouldn’t like to be held accountable today for the views I held when I was 14 (they weren’t racist views, incidentally, just silly and painfully misguided). Beyond that, we have no way of knowing that a given “family membership” wasn’t purchased by one overzealous family-member on behalf of their horrified kids.

On top of that, I’d like to relate a minor event from my own youth. I once decided — with a friend — to sign up for and “infiltrate with the aim of discrediting” the scientologists. Needless to say, it was a ridiculous idea (scientologists do such a good job at discrediting themselves it’s hard to know what we could have achieved even if we’d succeeded) and it never went very far. Nonetheless, it would not surprise me to discover that my name, along with an out-of-date address, can be found somewhere in the dianetics archives.

Of the 13,500 names on the BNP membership list, there’s probably no more than one or two silly leftist youngsters who thought they could do some damage by signing up and attacking the organisation from within. All the same, just by looking at a list of names and addresses it’s impossible to tell who that one or two might be. Please bear that in mind before passing judgment.

Another issue… this time from a Ken MacLeod novel rather than my own youth, but still very relevant. In one of his early books (might even be The Star Fraction, his glorious first novel) one of the characters regularly messes with the head of an old rival by signing him up to various organisations and mailing-lists that he finds objectionable. Again, maybe no one on the BNP list falls into that category, but it would be a mistake to automatically assume every single name on it belongs to a hardcore racist.

Clearly the vast majority do. But there will be the handful of fifth-columnists, investigative journalists, agents of political rivals and so forth.

On top of all that there’s also the (much more likely) possibility of mistaken identity. We’ve all heard the stories about the pediatrician whose house was attacked by braindead anti-paedophile vigilantes. Memo to braying mobs: make sure you have the right Mr. Jones in Lincoln won’t you? ‘Cos the other one is a retired solicitor who worked for the Refugee Council and he’s got a heart condition.

Bunch of tossers

All that said, there’s no doubt that the 13,500 names on the list almost certainly include 13,300 racist scumbags. And while I have no problem with anyone who seeks to ridicule them for those views, I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that it should go any further than “ridicule” (at least as long as they are merely “views” and not “activities”). Nonetheless, those who hold sensitive jobs (police and teachers primarily) should be investigated, and if they’re not part of the 200 decent people who I’ve generously assumed are on the list, then they should be fired. The British National Party is a legal political party and I hope it goes without saying that I’m not a fan of the concept “thoughtcrime”. If you want to hold those views, then you are entitled to do so and shouldn’t be punished for it.

However, if you self-define as a racist activist dedicated to driving immigrants out of a country, then you must accept that there are certain jobs that aren’t appropriate for you. “Police officer” is one of those jobs. Full stop. And I’d argue that “school teacher” falls into that category too.

When all’s said and done though, and despite the seriousness with which we should all take the far right, my primary reaction to all this is still one of mirth. It’s hard not to relish the spectacle of the BNP giving itself a good kicking. And to add an hilarious dash of irony to the proceedings, Justin at Chicken Yoghurt points out that…

The crowning jewel of the story is that the BNP, who only this month called the Human Rights Act ‘surely one of the most pernicious pieces of legislation ever passed by the mother of Parliaments,’ and reiterated its promise to repeal it when the party – don’t laugh – becomes a ‘British Nationalist government’, have now asked the police to investigate breaches of the Human Rights Act.

It appears that the stalwart members of the Master Race are eager to wrap themselves in the European flag when it suits. As is their right of course. After all, they’re only human.

I noticed the “women bishops” thing hit the headlines this week. Thing is, I knew the anglican church were in for another round of this nonsense the very moment the women priests thing had been settled. It was inevitable. Frankly, though, I can’t think about this issue without the words of Bill Hicks echoing in my ears:

It’s all very silly. Y’know? Of course I acknowledge the right of women to confer upon themselves whatever strange archaic titles they want, whether that be ‘priest’ or ‘bishop’ or ‘grand high vizier’. Men should have no monopoly on superstitious weirdness. But given the general contempt with which I hold such titles, as well as the low opinion I have of the modern churches, it’s hardly a great leap forward for feminism in my view.

Like the “gays in the military” thing, an issue which Bill Hicks also neatly dissected with a single observation (“Anyone dumb enough to want to be in the military… … …”)

I actually find myself in the uncomfortable position of — ostensibly — opposing equality when it comes to the question of homosexual men or women being admitted to the army. Once again, like the women priests thing, I of course acknowledge that a person should never be discriminated against because of their sexuality. But at the same time I find nationalism an inherently problematic concept, and I am utterly — right to the core of my being — opposed to militarism.

So you see, I’d argue that almost anything that reduces the size of our armies is a good thing. So I say “let the army have their prejudices”. In fact, let’s encourage some more! Next up, ban redheads from the military. Then anyone with brown eyes should be dishonourably discharged. Right-handed people and anyone whose name contains the letter ‘S’.

Seriously.

Gays in the military? No!

(but no straights either)

Philip over at The Curmudgeon is reminding his readers that they were warned.

It seems Gordon Brown has just announced that there is “no easy solution” to the problem of care for the elderly. Because, of course, up until now we’ve all assumed that there was. There’s an easy solution to the problem of care for the elderly, we all thought, and any minute now Gordon Brown will press that button on his command console, labelled “solve”, and all will be well.

I do love that “no easy solution” line. As if running a nation and dealing with the myriad problems that face it, is somehow supposed to be easy. Of course it’s not bloody easy! We don’t need politicians to tell us that. We already know that.

What’s needed is for someone to work out a difficult solution, and then successfully implement it. And if you’re incapable of that, then you have no goddamn business standing for election. Get the fuck out of office and give someone competent a go. Someone who isn’t scared of difficult problems and doesn’t wander off to sulk in a corner because they thought it was going to be easy.

Fracking gits, the whole sorry lot of them.

Justin at Chicken Yoghurt has made some suggestions as to how the British Labour Party might reconnect with the electorate in the wake of the sound kicking they received in the local elections this week. His ideas are good ones in my opinion, but they wouldn’t save Labour even if the party was far-sighted enough to implement them. Which it’s not.

In reality, nothing’s going to prevent a Tory victory at the next general election. Well, nothing beyond the wildly implausible. Britain is fed up with Labour. And what’s more, Britain doesn’t like Gordon Brown. The poor bloke is on a hiding to nothing; he’s got no charisma and he’s leading a government that people don’t feel they can trust. In our ultra-mediated world, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Plus the economy won’t be kind to him between now and the next general election. Every Labour soundbite that followed the meltdown this week insisted that the poor result was due to a downturn in the economy. I have news for them… no it wasn’t. The electorate gave you a thrashing because they don’t like you any more. Get your heads around that and you may not spend quite so many years in the wilderness after the next election. That said, the economy will be a major factor at the general election. And not in a good way.

Smart Labour strategists (I assume there are a couple) are already thinking about how best to exploit the predictable mess of 2010 from the opposition benches.

The tragedy of all this is the fact that the electorate don’t have the imagination to look beyond the tories when it comes to choosing a replacement. And they certainly don’t have the imagination for what’s really needed… to look beyond party politics entirely.

I’ve just realised that, despite the title of this post, none of this is very constructive really. But the trouble is — as Burroughs says in Interzone —

We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decisions […] The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident; inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.

… and I really don’t see much room for constructive improvement until we’ve shrugged off this foolish way of running our affairs.

All the same, in the spirit of constructivism in its broadest sense, and having already ruled out any real likelihood of saving the British Labour party, here’s some ideas that I believe should be implemented by the people of all industrialised nations (and if they insist on going through the party-political system to do so, then so be it). Oh, and I don’t vouch for the popularity of these policies, merely their urgent necessity…

1. The fundamental philosophy that public transport needs to be given priority over private car ownership should inform all relevant policies. Car ownership should be made more expensive and less convenient, while public transport should be expanded.
2. All new buildings must be built to passivHaus standard, or equivalent. Profits from fossil fuels should be heavily taxed* and the revenue used to upgrade the energy efficiency of current building stock.
3. The building of new fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants should be halted. The question must cease to be “how do we supply our demands with renewables?” And it must become “how do we modify our demands to meet the supply from renewables?”
4. Airport expansion projects should be halted. Aviation fuel, like all fossil fuels, should be heavily taxed. Plane tickets should be taxed and the money used to subsidise train tickets.
5. An examination of the food production and distribution system should be carried out. This should be done with an eye to optimising it based on two priorities; (a) the physical health of the population, and (b) the environmental impact of that system. Financial profit is not to be considered a priority, and questions of raw production efficiency (units per hectare, for instance) should not over-ride health and environmental concerns.

Oh, and there’s plenty more where that came from. Stuff about limiting property ownership and about fundamentally restructuring the way political decisions are made. It’s real nightmarish fringe stuff, I guess, when viewed from the modern political mainstream.

But that can change too, you know. And sometimes faster than you’d think.

It’s roughly two years since I moved away from London, and it appears — to paraphrase Ripley from Aliens — that IQs have dropped sharply since I’ve been gone. Seriously London… Boris Johnson?! What the hell is that all about? Did they open the polling booths at 2am and you all voted in the midst of a late-night ketamine binge? Or is this some kind of subversive plot to discredit the tories in the long-run; y’know, let them wreck your town and hopefully it’ll stop them wrecking the country…? If so, then let me be the first to say that I admire the nobility of your sacrifice.

But the thing is; that’s not what happened, is it? What happened is that Londoners turned out in relatively large numbers to support Boris Johnson because they think he’s the best person for the job of running their city. I’m sorry, I need to say that again because it’s still not sinking in… Boris Johnson is now running London.

That’s just mad.

The only reason everyone knows Boris Johnson far better than they know Patrick Cormack (Tory MP for South Staffordshire, in case you’re wondering) is because Boris Johnson is the blithering idiot MP who can be relied upon to act like a fool on telly. It’s not his rapier wit that gets him on Have I Got News For You? It’s the inherent absurdity that this upperclass twit actually holds a position of power. He’s there to laugh at. And it’s funny because he’s only one MP out of hundreds, and the only people voting for him are the wealthy residents of Henley.

Until now. It’s really not funny any more, London. You’ve voted for a man who has pledged to “scale back the congestion charge”. Let’s not mince words here, he wants to make it easier and cheaper to drive a car into the city. In a world of record oil prices, of a potential peak in production, a world in which Climate Change threatens catastrophic consequences; you’ve given the job of running Europe’s largest city to a man who actively seeks to encourage private car use? You fucking idiots!