??? This is STILL OK?

Another post, another trip back in time.

I like Private Eye, though more for the investigative journalism than the rather tired jokes. They nailed the heart surgery scandal and numerous corporate tax evaders. But I'm struggling to find an interpretation of this which isn't just plain racist. Anyone?

A proud day

I've always wanted to get a letter into Pedantry Corner in Private Eye (it used to be called Pedant's Corner until some pedants said it should be Pedants' Corner), and I've finally managed it.

Someone wrote in last time to correct an error: a contributor wrote Bingham when they meant Bingley, the character in Pride and Prejudice. Unfortunately, the letter added a mistake: spelling the Bennet family's surname as Bennett.

I'm a bit torn: I'm proud to be in Pedantry Corner. But is it really pedantic to insist on getting the names right for one of the most famous novels in the English language? I correct them all the time in essays…

Lest we forget…

This was one of the funniest things I've seen all year. By glorious coincidence, the Liberal Democrats were roundly punished for their perfidy in the local election in the same week that Osama bin Laden was killed.

The Lib Dems stood on an election platform of abolishing the £3000 tuition fee, and promoting our European identity. In government, they've allowed the Tories to triple fees to £9000 and sat idly by as Britain withdraws from any serious engagement with Europe just as it becomes clear even to the dullest brain that individual nation states are powerless in the face of the bond markets and ratings agencies (yes, the people said Enron, Lehman Brothers et al were fine, and proceeded to punish governments for bailing out the banks they said were in tip-top shape).

So all in all, not exactly a triumph for Nick Clegg.

Just not funny

I buy Private Eye, but less and less for its 'humour', more for its excellent investigative journalism - it first broke the story of the Inland Revenue's decision to let big companies - like Vodafone - off massive chunks of their tax bills.

One major flaw with the magazine is its obsessive anti-environmentalist stance. There isn't a corporate shill or anti-wind activist who's ever been made unwelcome between its covers. Today's issue includes the evergreen 'Funny Old World', which collects hilarious stories of crime and corruption from foreign climes. Three stories grace the feature today: a Barbadian necrophile, a Kenyan panic about phone numbers which can kill you, and one about an advanced Japanese corporation which has reduced temperatures in its factories and offices by 15 degrees C (and reduced emissions) by growing plants all over the buildings' exteriors. They grow cucumbers, peas and gourds, which are then served up in the canteen.

How I laughed. Let's all point and laugh at the silly Japanese for, er, using less power and having good things to eat. Silly foreigners!

Back in the real world - here's Kyocera Corporation's guide to doing this on your own building and some rather beautiful pictures of their plants.

They're no Bernsteins or Woodwards, that's for sure

Have you ever suspected that a lot of journalists, especially on rightwing papers, are lazy space-fillers (known by Private Eye as Phil Space)? You should probably read Flat Earth News then.

However, if you want to take advantage of their neediness and gullibility, keep an eye on this page. It's very enlightening.

Gits in Ermine

Talking of management, our Chancellor is Lord Paul. He's listed in Private Eye, the satirical/investigative magazine as 'non-domiciled' for tax reasons. Essentially, this means that he's got a place in the House of Lords (unelected), voting on affairs of state, and leading this august institution, while telling the authorities that he needn't pay tax in this country because he doesn't live here. I wonder how he manages to get any work done, and how he squares influencing the country without paying his way. What an example to us all.

He is for ID cards, opposes action to tackle climate change, doesn't mind hunting and appears not to like our homosexual friends. A fine example to our students.

Hiking The Appalachian Trail

People have affairs, even those who proclaim their moral superiority, such as Governor Sanford of South Carolina. So really, we should leave him alone to rebuild his life, apologise to the injured parties and so on.

And I would, were it not for his brilliant grasp of euphemism. Having flitted off to Argentina for five days to be with his mistress, he informed his staff, and therefore the public, that he was 'Hiking the Appalachian Trail'. I love it. It may have to replace Private Eye's 'Ugandan Discussions', which derives from a sexual encounter in the 60s between a journalist and a politician at a party, when they explained their absence by claiming to have been discussing the Ugandan situation.

A grubby little morality tale

Cynical Ben is annoyed that Tessa Jowell has cast aspersions on the Italian justice system by restating her belief that husband David Mills is innocent of taking bribes from one S. Berlusconi for misleading a court. He's right, of course - imagine the fuss if a foreign government minister uttered similar comments about the Old Bailey. 

However - the Italian justice system is a wreck. Mills has two automatic rights to appeal, and there's a short expiry date on these trials - if he can delay or extend his appeals to 2010, the case ends and he gets away. Furthermore, the actual briber has changed the constitution to give himself immunity. There's little outcry because the Prime Minister controls the state TV and owns virtually all the private media (TV, radio, newspapers) left. 

I really want Mills to go down, and take Jowell and Co. with him. They're the epitome of all that's soulless and corrupt about the 'Labour' Party. They don't have any points of contact with the working or middle classes in this country. Mills is a solicitor specialising in tax avoidance. With the Tories, their openly expressed ideological position is that the state is bad and the interests of the individual must take precedence over all other rights. That authorises the kind of obscene greed, selfishness and contempt for others that they routinely manifest. Once you've adopted that position, criminality is simply innovation and entrepreneurship. 

Labour, however, was founded by the people to further the collective interests of the people. We're meant to see the state as the means by which to express and implement the public will. Our party has been captured (without a fight) by a cabal which explicitly rejects this vision. Once we have a cabinet of tax-evaders, directorship-seekers, bank-schmoozers, private-education supporters and above all NAKED CAPITALISTS, we have a party of hypocrites. These people don't have a sense of social justice or collective future. They openly and honestly believe in meritocracy: the concept that people successful in one field (always finance) must automatically have a superior vision of justice, education, morality, health, diplomacy and all the other branches of government. The result is a government advised and often run by unelected individualists who treat the ordinary citizen as a shameless, lazy benefit cheat while allowing the serious criminals to wreck the economy and export jobs. I didn't see many of them arguing for 'light-touch regulation' of the benefits system, but they certainly enforced it with regard to bank regulation - with brilliant results, as I'm sure you'll agree. 

People: New Labour are entryists. They spent the 80s throwing the Trots out of Labour for using the same tactic, but they are simply a gang of wreckers who took the empty shell of a broken party and rebuilt it on shifty money and Thatcherite ideology. 

Think on this: the Inland Revnue (HMRC) don't own their offices. They were sold to Mapeley Steps Limited and rented back (supposedly, and wrongly, to save money). Who are Mapeley Steps? They're an offshore company which doesn't pay any tax. So the body tasked with collecting tax to spend on our behalf saw nothing wrong with selling its own buildings to tax evaders. The government itself sees no problem with ripping itself of, with having no faith in the right and duty of government to fund its activities through fair and just taxation. Who benefits from this? Not the government. Not us. Mapeley Steps benefit. Who does government work for? Not us, but Mapeley Steps and all its colleagues. If even the government doesn't believe in government, what's going to happen to us all? Taxation pays for schools, health, pensions, clean air and decent housing. If they condone tax evasion, all these things will decline. 

They don't have our interests at heart, even now. The question is, for whom do we vote now? I just don't know. I do know that the sorry tale of Jowell, Mills and Co. is simply a tiny little moral tale about a clique that completely lost its way, lost its moral compass and was completely captured by the glitz of the City. I'm sorry to bang on like a 1920s Syndicalist, but this was inevitable. 

PS. For more on Mapeley Steps and several other equally disgraceful scandals, read Private Eye, which is more than just old jokes for buffers, and the Guardian's recent series on tax avoidance.