Cabinet Biscuit Budget Slashed

Crikey, sometimes one feels really old. Idle was at school with Tom Strathclyde and has kept in touch with him, off and on, ever since. In those crazy, far-off days when it seemed like a good idea to become a (Conservative) MP, Tom was kind enough to be one of my two sponsors. Most recently, I have encountered him at the country club where we were both extravagant enough to send our daughters to boarding school.

Now he has decided to retire from politics AFTER 25 YEARS ON THE FRONT BENCH in the Lords. Crumbs! Are we really as old as that? Strathclyde thinks he has time for a bit of a career in the private sector, so we’re not dead yet.

Whilst there will be more Hobnobs and Custard Creams for the others around the Cabinet table, this is a blow. He learned his trade at the knee of the then Lord Cranborne, who out-grandees most holders of office in the Lords in the past generation. Tom is a proper old-fashioned Tory, loyal and steady. He shares a pragmatic outlook with the Prime Minister, but I don’t think this leads him into Social Liberal territory as it does with Cameron. His instinct is that of a Tory, not a PR flimflam merchant. This may be proved by his resignation, which some commentators are saying is down, pure and simple, to his exasperation with the clowns and political re-treads who make up the LibDem benches in the Lords. He’s well out of it, surely. At least we can be sure that the ridiculous and immature Clegg reforms are dead and buried.

Now that he has more time to himself, I think I’ll invite Tom for lunch at my club. It might have to be after bonus day, though.

Prepare for Schism

Church of England drops gay bishop opposition

The Church of England has dropped its prohibition on gay clergy becoming bishops.

The announcement, from the Church's House of Bishops, would allow clergy in civil partnerships to become bishops if they promised to be celibate.

'If they promised to be celibate'. ROFL! We'll take it on trust, shall we? Does it allow sharing a bed? Open mouthed kissing? Copping a feel?

Forgive me, I don't want to know and it's none of my business. It is the Church of England's business, and its communicants. I am a communicant with no religion, organised or otherwise. But I have a cultural affinity with the Church of England, having been at boarding school for ten years and having been married by it (those old, agnostic days). I love its comfortable old King James bible prose, its fine hymns and soaring choral heights of artistry. Its architecture is synonymous with the English countryside, and those cathedrals! Until it became the unarmed wing of the National Socialists Collective, it was a force for community cohesion, social responsibility, modest morality and continuity.

John Sentamu was a nailed-on certainty to take over from the Archbeard until late in the proceedings. It's clear now why this didn't happen - Sentamu is an African and a traditionalist, and Lambeth Palace were about to Say Yes to gay bishops. They could envisage the reaction of the Anglican communion in Africa, which will be uncompromising. I suppose Sentamu might now conceivably become the leader of the traditionalists after the predictable schism, an Archbishop Lefebvre for the modern day.

The modern Church of England is a weak and demoralised rabble, failing to understand its role. The more it embraced leftwingery and guitars, the quicker the pews emptied. It needs robust leadership, uncontaminated by agenda politics. My bet is that openly gay bishops (and NO women ones????) is not the way ahead.

Perhaps the Prince of Wales was doing some wise ground-preparation when he spoke about becoming Defender of Faiths.

Poor Dumb Fools

Idle renewed his season ticket on New Year's Eve, thereby avoiding a 4%+ increase (something to look forward to at the end of the year). £4300, since you ask, to get from North East Hampshire into Waterloo, and the tubes and buses.

Today was a holiday, but rather than do my tax return, I decided to have lunch in London with a former junior banker who worked for me for two or three years but decided earlier in the year to study for an MBA in Milan, where he is now ensconced.

After lunching and buying some shirts in the sales, I wandered casually back to Waterloo to take the 1630 train. This is an agreeable train to catch, being pre-rush-hour and therefore half-empty. We took off at 1630 on the dot, I had newspapers and a pen for the crossword, and all was well with the world.

Well, we got as far as Sandown Park before the brakes came on in such a way that we experienced commuters know is not a good sign. And from 1645 until 1830, that's where we stayed. The driver, the guard, the man who answered the tannoy's baleful call "are there any employees of South West Trains on board?" - all of them proved completely useless when it came to getting us going again. Despite being only about ten minutes upline from Woking, a huge train depot and junction, it took them over an hour and a half to get a 'fitter' onto the train.

And you know what happened next? He simply uncoupled the rear five carriages from the front five, after the unlucky residents of the rear had been instructed to march forward to the front five. We left the dodgy half, with its electrical failure, sitting like a beached whale on the southbound fast track. It had been clear from the first minute of our sudden stop that it was electrical failure and that if the driver couldn't reboot it, we would uncouple. They told us so. But the driver didn't know how to do it, nor did the guard.

So, on idle's first day on the trains following a £4300 renewal, he is already in time deficit to the tune of 100 minutes to South West Trains. A figure which will surely rise to a thousand and more in the months ahead, never to be returned. A year of commuting stretches out in front of one like the Gobi Desert.

Of course, the train companies are required by their charter to recompense the poor dumb fools who suffer their gross inadequacy each year. Idle, like the other PDFs who renewed their season tickets this week, received a rebate..........

Of £24.

An Alternative History of 2013

Idle's New Year resolution is to write loads more rubbish and to make every effort to make it less like rubbish and more like a readable diarist. And by 'diarist' I aspire to Alan Clarke or James Lees-Milne (a grand old poof who I knew, being an executor of his wife's estate; poofs had wives in those days) rather than Bridget Jones or Adrian Mole.

A lofty ambition, clearly. The fact that it has taken me until half past seven in the evening on January 2nd to tap the keyboard is not exactly a flying start, particularly when my day has involved no more than two dog walks, mixing a jug of bloody mary, and watching first Amla and then Kallis score delightful 60s at Newlands against the hapless Kiwis, themselves bowled out for 45 by the splendidly named VD Philander.

See what I've done, already? Given you a 'what I did today', as though I were a prepschool boy again, doing his holiday diary (for which the 11 year old idle won a prize at the Dragon School in 1973). Sorry, it won't happen again. I mean to concentrate on the burning issues of the day and to put the idle viewpoint, firmly.

Because he chose a national holiday on which to die, and because he had been (a brilliant) BBC cricket correspondent, Christopher Martin-Jenkins' untimely death has had wide coverage. I doubt there are many who read more of CMJ's output than did I; I devoured The Cricketer at school, found his books in my stocking most Christmases, read every word he published as the Telegraph correspondent, even when overseas, and hung upon every smooth and concise ball-by-ball commentary he uttered on TMS. Now that the modern cricketing journalist has to be an ex-England player, regardless of wit, vocabulary, hinterland or attractiveness of voice, he is surely the last of his type. I will, honestly, miss him.

The fiscal cliff avoidance (brilliantly depicted by Adams in the Telegraph cartoon slot), is a dangerous fudge. Mark Steyn (Collision Course With Reality - see top right of this blog) put it well in November - the United States, its electorate and legislators alike, are heading deep into Western European Failed Social Model territory. Who would have thought the cliff would have been averted by a 'compromise' which raised taxes by $41 for every $1 of spending cuts? This is a one-way ticket on the Lunacy Express, and no mistake.

The Dodgy Honours List, in Full

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Kt
Hmm. Let's just see if his 'unequivocal support' to the coppers who might have, well, made it all up about Thrasher Mitchell, explodes in his face. I am a great supporter of awarding medals and honours to policemen upon their retirement, rather than upon their appointment to top jobs. Who, for instance, would have awarded anything but a large raspberry and a halving of his pension to Sir Ian Blair, after the mockery he made of his Commissioner's tenure? Oh, that's right, NuLabour - they made him a PEER! Jeeeesus!

Cherie Blair QC, CBE
For services to her property portfolio, shoe collection and dubious agenda politics. Apparently she has done much for 'women's services and charity, at home and overseas'. Now, Idle has met and chatted to Cherie, and can report that she is less alarming of visage than her unphotogenic history. Furthermore, she is bright and direct. Her work at the infamous Matrix Chambers, however, qualifies her only for an EU 'human rights' gong. Not remotely has she stood up for the British Empire. I dare say the very phrase makes her quiver. Or wobble.

Sir Hector Sants, Kt
Yes, him. The man who was asleep at the wheel of the FSA in the run up to the financial crisis, and proved incompetent as it unravelled. You know the chap - he was responsible for regulating, inter alia, Barclays, who rigged LIBOR, did their fair share of stuffing their clients with useless PPI rubbish, etc. 'Santa' has now gone off to join, erm... Barclays as head of compliance, on £3m a year. Move along please, people - no conflict of interest to see here.

Dame Ursula Brennan, DCB
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Justice. Our justice system is chaotic, favours criminals over victims, sets ever more lenient sentences, commands less and less public respect. Enuff said.

Miss Tracey Emin CBE
Oh bleeding dear. A testament to vulgarity, vanity and breathtaking chutzpah. Not a single grain of artistic talent. An 'artist' for the I'm a Big Brother Get Me Celebrity Strictly Outtahere generation.

There are more, but my bath is run and I need a drink - Are these the sort of knights we dub? Won't SOMEONE lead me to the pub!

UPDATE: A good read on La Emin

Spot the Sane One

Do you remember at school when there was 'time for one more photo' ("DO make an effort to be sensible")? Whereupon we all pulled faces, turned sideways, did the Eric Morecambe thing with one's specs, pretended to stick one's tongue in the ear of the chap standing next door.

This is evidently one of those moments. Why they have released it publicly beats me. Dave appears to be doing a braying donkey impression (possibly due to Gove doing something behind his back), much to the amusement of Hammond, Alexander, Paterson, Hague and May. IDS and Whassisname behind him have had itching powder down the shirt collar (an old, but always satisfying practical joke). Tom Strathclyde has had his hair stuck to the pillar and Ed Davey is struggling to contain his 'excitement', by the looks of things. Behind them all towers Sir George Young, who might be pogoing but, I gather, really is that tall.

A ship of fools if ever I saw one, with one clear and obvious exception: Her Majesty, calm, poised and ready for the shot. What a consummate pro she is, and doesn't she just show up the jobbing politicians? Quite how Warsi, Laws and Letwin talked their way into attending Cabinet, history does not relate. Let's just give thanks that Yeo isn't there.

PS See that carpet? It's called the Ardabil. I think there are four or five proper hand-tied copies in the world; the original is in the V&A museum and another got badly burned, I think. Commander Idle wisely bought one forty years ago and it lay on the floor of the big drawing room at Idle Manor until the house was sold. All that needs to happen now is for Idle or his even Idler Bro to buy a house with a 30' by 20' reception room. Don't hold your breath.

Protesting Too Much

The Speccie has a story about the estimable Dr Fox saying what we all know, which is that the Foreign Office has its own agenda, particularly on Europe.

But though that position might be popular with many Tories, Fox’s words offended Sir Paul Lever, the former British ambassador to Germany and Assistant Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, who told Coffee House Dr Fox was deliberately shifting the focus of debate to make political points:

‘Civil servants, whether you like it or not, work for ministers. Those in the Foreign Office worked as enthusiastically for Mrs Thatcher when she was waving her handbag as they did for other Prime Ministers of Foreign Secretaries who had completely different views. For former ministers to rubbish civil servants because they are afraid of criticising their party friends is a cop out.

‘If you don’t like the country’s policy on the EU, criticise the ministers who are making it. The idea that they are all just prisoners of their civil servants and they just do what the department tells them to do is bollocks, that’s not how government works and he knows its not how government works.’

Sorry, Sir Paul. I simply don't believe you. The mandarins work for themselves, not ministers. They might work with ministers from time to time, but the Sir Humphreys of this world are, we can be sure, exactly as the great Sir Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn portrayed them.

Ministers come and go with great frequency, whilst the great panjandrums of Whitehall stick around for ever, and almost never get fired for incompetence, even when the witnesses for the prosecution are lined up around the block.

That they are clever and talented, I have no doubt. If they were working in Britain's best interests, I'm sure they could outfox their counterparts in Brussels and Berlin and Paris. But the evidence is that they have sold us down the river, even during times of handbag-waving by that independent-minded heroine, the Lady Thatcher. We are up to our ochsters in Euromanure, and it is time to struggle free. The 'advice' of civil servants will be to see how things develop, not to frighten the horses, not to do anything rash, wait until we suffocate, etc etc etc.

Trouble is, Cameron and Hague appear to agree with them.