Entente Cordiale by necessity

I was watching the Channel Four news discussion between Peter Mandelson, Britain's Secretary of State for Business, and Christine Lagarde, the French Finance Minister, and for all the disagreements between Britain and mainland Europe on how to get out of our financial mess, there was a rare bon accord between the British and French ministers on one issue - the need to deal with tax havens.



I have to say that Mandelson, who I have never particularly liked since his days as Blair's enforcer pre 1997, is a more than competent Minister and he was refreshingly honest about past fiscal mistakes. Of course he could afford to be as they were all Brown's mistakes and we all know etc etc.... But anyway he didn't duck or hedge and said that the expansive love in Labour had with the free market and minimal controls had proved to be a mistake and lessons needed to be learned. He was insistent that British tax havens like my paternal homeland, the Isle of Man, plus the Channel Islands and other places within the reach of British intervention would be brought to book and disclosure compelled under new international finance rules to be drawn up at the G20 summit next week.



Mme Lagarde nodded enthusiastically and added her own firm support for the similar control of French hideouts like Monaco. I gather the French have already compelled Prince Albert to sign a declaration that the assets of French companies and individuals held in Monaco will be disclosed to the French government.

If all this goes through it is a massive step. It's one which is, of course, overdue and maybe - making virtue out of necessity - it may be the start of a more prudent mind set in terms of government and individuals about finance and savings and not spending money you haven't got. There does seem to be a feeling of urgency that somehow we have to get back to basic prudence in our financial dealings and hurray for that!

As a by product though, it does make me wonder what is to become of the Isle of Man, a place for which, being my father's home and where I had many happy childhood memories, I have a lot of affection. It has long faded as a holiday resort , in which guise it flourished up to the 1960s and has since become a centre of 'tax efficiency' as I was once taught to call it by the insurance company for which I worked. For many years now the TT tourist's motor bikes and old cars have been replaced by Porsches and Mercedes saloons parked outside the new company HQs which have sprung up all over and provided the island with a lot of stable revenue. It seems to have nowhere else to go if, as a result of new legislation, all these advantages disappear.

Sad for the Isle of Man, and its fellow havens, but very necessary and overdue.

Consequences worse than the 'crime'

I feel a little sorry for Jacqui Smith. Given her job, her public profile and the vultures who now await her on the Tory benches, the revelation that her husband added two soft porn films to her expenses claim must be a source of overwhelming embarrassment for her..more in fact than the circumstances demand.



I live in the same cable area and take the same Virgin Media service and I can quite see why two porn films can have been overlooked in that VM don't itemise the movies you watch unless you request them to do so (presumably to protect embarrassed spouses who might have to own up) but it is surely wrong that additional bought movies, porn or otherwise, over and above the basic telecommunications allowance should have been claimed.

No wonder these politicians did not want their expenses published. They must have realised what an impression would be given to the public and, so far, it must be a worse impression even than many had feared. Pigs in the trough.

I am beginning to wonder if Jacqui Smith has a future. Not because of the porn films but because this whole issue of expenses is making her look extremely careless. She claims the flat she shares with her sister as her 'main residence' and then claims on her website that 'she still lives in Redditch with her husband and two children' This clearly to impress local voters but it would be appear slightly deceitful on one side or the other. Either she is cooking the expenses books or lying to the electorate.

Then surely, even if you ARE a busy Home Secretary, you put some time aside to personally vet stuff which is being claimed in your name..in fact PARTICULARLY if you are Home Secretary and given the nature of your job. The fact that either she didn't or she is now wriggling out of a mess of her own making, doesn't say much about her judgment.

And Ministers of the Crown, blatantly lacking good judgment, are not what Gordon Brown needs in the Labour government right now.

The answer to the rules of succession

It seems that all our political parties are united in their agreement that the 1701 Act of Settlement, which confirmed the laws of succession of our Royal Family, are archaic and no longer represent the standards of the 21st century.

And of course they are right. It is ludicrous in this day and age to debar a member of the royal family from the throne if they marry a Roman Catholic. Religious bigotry of this sort has no place in a modern Britain, though one could understand the fears which prompted the law back in the early 18th century. Similarly to suggest that a male child should always take precedence over a female in the rights of succession is likewise archaic. Princess Anne is the Queen's second born but is now only 10th in line to the throne behind Prince Charles and his male children, and other male cousins.



Suggestions are being made by those in the constitutional know that, despite cross party agreement that things should change, nothing will, mainly because of the fear that any such constitutional changes might open up a wider debate on the monarchy within the Commonwealth.

Would that be a bad thing? Would it not be an excellent moment for the nations of the Commonwealth to take a long hard look at their constitutional position and decide whether or not they wish to retain a Monarchy or become a Republic. And that list, of course, should include the United Kingdom.

Iraq enquiry - Catharsis or cop-out?

It has been announced that an official enquiry into the Iraq War will be held 'after July', which is when British combat troops will have effectively left the country. David Miliband has said the government is 'committed to holding a comprehensive enquiry' and, if taken at face value, should be a source of celebration.

But I find the bile rising in my mouth already, sensing the prospect of just further betrayal. From a purely personal point of view, the decision to invade Iraq was the most sickening decision a Labour party of which I had been a member for 40 years had ever taken. It was then I left it. I didn't want to leave it but I felt I had little choice. I couldn't do a Robin Cook and leave the government. Nor was I part of a Constituency which I believed felt as I did. There were members who were as enraged as me and who made the last meeting with Gisela Stuart, our MP a difficult one. But by and large, the Constituency establishment - including the MP - and the Secretary were primarily concerned about backing Blair and screw the morality of the invasion.

I went to London for the protest and joined the million impotent people who this fucking Labour government simply ignored. For the next months and years until the truth was revealed about the absence of real justifications, and deprived of a political focus I watched with anger every time I saw Blair at his most 'sincere' justifying every decision he made.



I have never been so disgusted by politics in my life and it has lingered to this day. Now is there to be a catharsis? Are we to really take the lid off every aspect of the Iraq invasion? Are we to go back to basics, examining the root justifications, testing their weight, examining the evidence of legality and who said who to who? Are we in fact going to come anywhere near making a quasi legal decision about whether the justifications outweighed the negatives, whether we were blatantly lied to in order to appease an American agenda? Are the politicians responsible for prosecuting that war really going to have to answer for it?

My immediate response is - of course not. I have so little faith in this government that I believe it will be just another piece of stage management in order to try and appease the doubters with so many caveats on its scope of enquiry as to make it useless. At the end of the day I fear little would satisfy me except to see that bastard Blair facing an International Criminal Court. But as that ain't going to happen we might as well spend the money on the victims of the war rather than lining the pockets of yet more lawyers.

Have we taken leave of our multi-cultural senses?

The actor, Sir David Jason, has been forced to apologise and some radio station reduced to wetting its knickers in abject distress because the recently knighted actor cracked a 'joke' which involved a play on an Indian sub-continent name. He said 'What do you call a Pakistani cloak room attendant?' Answer: 'Mahatma Coat'



The 'joke' is something from the 1930s, I think I first heard it at primary school back in the 1940s/50s (though it probably said an Indian then as Pakistan was hardly conceived and Mahatma Gandhi had been the Indian Premier) The point is it's a silly play on words like 'Lunchtime o' Booze' the 'Irish' journalist much beloved by Private Eye or the female stone thrower 'Eva Brick'. It is NOT an attack on Pakistani people.

Have we become so frightened of causing offence in this multi-cultural paradise that every single silly joke like this has to provoke a feast of bed wetting? It's not particularly funny..it's too old and corny...but unfunny has never been a reason for apologising for humour. And when you hear some of the really nasty, vicious stuff that goes out on air these days you do wonder what the fuss was about.

Of course Del Boy was misguided in telling the joke -not because it IS offensive but because, in the current climate, there was bound to be somebody claiming it was. That's just the way of the world. Maybe had he said an Indian cloakroom attendant he would have got away with it because I suspect half the panic and walking on egg shells is because Pakistan is Muslim.

I don't like racist jokes..and I mean those which seek to demean and undermine another person's race and culture in the way Bernard Manning used to do, for example. But for heaven's sake, to make such a fuss about this type of pun hardly shows a society at ease with itself. And I don't believe most of our asian citizens would have found this offensive - only people with an agenda who deliberately look for something offensive in order to make some political point.

Now they're taking the piss!

I make no apology for briefly returning to the issue of MP's expenses since it has been revealed today that Tony McNulty, the Work Minister, has claimed £60,000 on 6 years for a 'second home' HIS PARENTS HOUSE, eleven miles from his own.

Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the committee for standards in public life, has said that most MPs simply do not have the mind set that these expenses are intended to help with a hardship but, instead, believe they are a deserved 'perk' of the job. How has it got to that? One of the criteria supposed to be used is 'Could my claim damage the reputation of Parliament?'

Is there any doubt? McNulty when quizzed said he was 'compliant'. What does that mean? Presumably that he followed the dotted 'i's and crossed 't's and decided he was eligible for a bit more brass without any risk. It would appear that he doesn't even stay there. Well why would he when his own home is so near? But he uses it as a 'base'.



This simply smacks of profiteering. These guys are supposed to be setting an example and it's quite clear that they are incapable of doing so. And there is no leadership from the top. It would seem that the British tradition of putting responsible men and women on trust has failed miserably.

Clearly new and swingeing rules need to be brought in to deal with this. If these people are going to behave like irresponsible children who see only a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then they deserve to be treated like it.

The maudlin, almost obscene, Jade Goody industry

Yesterday a young woman aged 27 died of cancer. This is sad in itself. As sad as the similar deaths of thousands of young men and women in this country who die prematurely without having had any kind of a life. Young people have died from disease, road accidents, even, sometimes, in battle. Most die grieved only by their nearest and dearest, their deaths unknown to the rest of us. The deaths make an obituary, at best, in the local newspaper, paid for by the family, to inform any one who cares.

This particular young woman was not particularly blessed with any great qualities which made her stand out as someone to admire or emulate. She came from a difficult family background, her father a career criminal, her boyfriend a man with criminal convictions. Her life, in fact, was similar to that of many throughout the United Kingdom and her contribution to the quality of British life hardly consequential.

She had the good fortune to be selected for the 'Big Brother' reality show for which she was primarily noted for a racist attack on an Indian actress, cavorting naked and being completely ignorant of the geography of England. But such are the perverse standards which we now apply to those considered worthy of admiration, that this young woman was elevated to celebrity status and subsequently became a multi millionaire through product endorsements and good marketing.



Then her short lived but successful rise to the top of the Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame tree hit a tragic finale. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Tragic for Jade Goody, for of course it is she, but a heaven sent opportunity for the maudlin, mock sentimental, money-grubbing gossip and celebrity industry which has grown up around her. Every moment of her declining days and weeks has been lovingly captured by the newspapers and gossip magazines and the cash registers rattled merrily as each aspect of her chemotherapy, her death bed marriage and now, her death will have been lapped up by an avaricious public which seems to have lost all sense of perspective.

And now - I know I shouldn't be irritated but I am - it was announced that the Prime Minister is leading the tributes. Why, for goodness sake? This is the woman who embarrassed him on a visit to India by her ill timed racist abuse of an Indian actress? As I said at the beginning, any death of a young person is to be regretted and this one is no exception but what on earth has she done to be the focus of Prime Ministerial tribute? She has not been an ambassador for Britain in any field at all - arts, entertainment etc - which would be worthy of the Prime Minister's notice. It's not really the PM's fault. Politicians have always made sure they acknowledge popular culture in order to show they are not too removed from the peasantry, though few can be fortunate enough to get Tony Blair's 'Princess Di' moment. 100 years ago it might have been a music hall artist, 50 years ago a rock star. It is the goal posts which have moved. Miss Goody was simply a 'celebrity' - famous for being famous - spawned by this amazing growth in reality television which is creating a whole new sphere of heroes and heroines.

There is no doubt that Channel 4 came up with a brilliant concept which has captured the nation - to take the so-called average Briton off the street, show him and her in natural habitat - drinking, swearing,screwing, throwing up - and make us all relate to them. It has worked wonders, no doubt, though I detest the whole format. But it seems to have produced a very strange concept of who is worthy of elevation in the public eye and also a prosperous industry of parasites in the form of agents and media attention which feeds on the publicity.

In this case the hyenas are literally feeding on the corpse - and it's a development I find very, very hard to stomach.