Bitter Northern Scum ©All Newspapers

Well, perhaps not all newspapers. The liberal ones will send their Toynbeebots up to the dreadful slums once every five years to wring their hands about why the proles are bitter fat racists. The rightwing ones will pay some toff to churn out 800 words from a golf course bar about why the  proles are Speaking For Britain while still being Unwashed, fat, racist and northern.

What they won't do is spend any time there or ask whether the inhabitants of places like Stoke are reacting to a polity and economy that has absolutely no interest – whoever is in government – in managing the transfer from full, mass, employment (Stoke had potteries, coal and steel) to a post-industrial economy. The liberal ones send in the Tristrams now and then like ineffectual missionaries to explain why globalisation is brilliant and they have to get with the programme, and then wonder why the oiks fall for the constant stream of racist bile delivered in simple words by the right. And poor old Labour has to run an election campaign with the lotto voce slogan 'We know Tristram was a selfish prick who ran away at the first sniff of a canapé, but this time it'll be different'.

There's a distinct air of David Attenborough about the media and state's attitude towards places like Stoke, except that he loves his subjects while they are embarrassed by or cynical about those left-behinds. Poor old Stoke - hard to find a babycino or a hedge-fund trader there. What hope do they have? For the people of Stoke, politics is like the weather: it happens to them and there's nothing they can do about whatever is thrown their way.

News from Nowhere

Last Saturday, I went to Stoke-on-Trent's Potteries Museum and Art Gallery for the annual Stephen Hagger Lecture (very sadly I was the youngest there by a good twenty years, and too many of them were from the National Trust wing of Morris fans). This year's lecturer was Fiona MacCarthy, design historian and biographer of Edward Burne-Jones, Eric Gill and William Morris, whose life and influence was her subject for the day. What links these three men and those around them is a commitment to art as a way of life: from the production of goods they evolved a philosophy of community, economics and politics – especially Morris. Stoke is the perfect venue for a lecture on William Morris. The industry which sustained the city was pottery: thousands of highly skilled workers producing globally-renowned items of astonishing beauty, and yet the city is a depressing sump of deprivation and unemployment now, and always was ugly: talk about alienation in action.

Morris, by GF Watts

Morris is perhaps best known as a designer of hugely expensive wallpaper and furniture: the current revival of interest in Victorian Gothic has placed him front and centre. However, he was also an accomplished novelist, typographer, poet, songwriter and revolutionary socialist activist. From his aesthetic interest in the medieval period evolved a conviction that industrial society and production led to degradation of the spirit. From Marx, he learned that alienated work beggared us not only economically but spiritually. He learned every skill from the basics, even making his own dyes for wallpapers and tapestries, and when Morris and Co. was founded, ran the company along egalitarian lines.

Morris seems to have been a force of nature - constantly trying new things, full of energy and also enormous fun: his friend Burne-Jones's cartoons of him are affectionate as well as satirical:

Basically, he was a big fat jolly man who couldn't sit still: his death was ascribed to a doctor as due to 'simply being William Morris and having done the work of most ten men'.

I don't know if Morris's aesthetic appeals to you. I find the wallpaper beautiful but too busy, but the late period 'Arts and Crafts' furniture is really to my taste, and I'd love some of the ceramics designed by his associate William de Morgan.

a de Morgan pot

Morris developed a conviction that beautiful things must be useful things - his followers became the kind of sandalled vegetarian liberals that Orwell hated so much. The contradiction for Morris, of course, is that producing hand-made work ethically cost a fortune, so his customers were only what he called the 'swinish rich'. At least – unlike now – Morris's workers were making a decent living from selling expensive goods to these scum: in our day the shareholders profit while goods are made by slaves in sweatshops.

While I can't afford Morris furniture, glass, wallpaper or ceramics (and in the antiques context their cultural meaning is very different from what he intended), I can read his books and poetry, and I have a cheap facsimile of his astonishing version of Chaucer's work. His novel News From Nowhere is perhaps the most accessible.

News from Nowhere

It's a Utopian fantasy set in a Britain which underwent a socialist revolution in 1952. Classes, law, finance, private property and cities have been abandoned and the people live in agrarian, peaceful, small villages (we tend to part company here: I grew up in the countryside and it's more Cold Comfort Farm than communist paradise). The details are less important than Morris's underlying assumption that human nature is essentially altruistic. Our faults, he says, are those of industrial, capitalist urbanism. It produces competition, hatred, violence, oppression and (not incidentally, aesthetic ugliness).

it is the allowing of machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays. And, again, that leads me to my last claim, which is that the material surroundings of my life should be pleasant, generous, and beautiful; that I know is a large claim, but this I will say about it, that if it cannot be satisfied, if every civilised community cannot provide such surroundings for all its members, I do not want the world to go on

Reforming work will lead to beauty both internal and external, open to all. In this common weal, beauty is a condition of justice, and vice versa: the inhabitants, we're told, could not be happy knowing that fellow citizens are in prison, or trapped in loveless relations: mutuality is the key to social harmony (in contrast to the current Justice Secretary, who is scrapping the Human Rights Act and has banned sending books to prisoners). This was also the basis of his Socialist League

Simply the design of the membership card brings me to the real point of this rambling post. Art and labour brought together. The card is simply beautiful. It proclaims the unity of politics, life and art and above all it is optimistic. Like News From Nowhere, it assumes that the socialist future will transform people's lives for the better. When did we stop believing this? It's still there in Atlee's 1951 Festival of Britain (yes, the Tories took power in 1950 but the Festival was planned under the pioneering 1945-50 Labour government that founded the NHS and did so much more). After that? Not so much. Our supposed leaders are ashamed of the word socialist and whatever they do believe in, it isn't founded in optimism. Nor does it believe in a future which unifies love, life, joy, work, art and politics. Neither Labour nor the multiple far-left splinter groups offer anything positive. We spend our time accepting the ideological boundaries of neoliberalism and finding ways to mitigate the damage it does. I can't imagine the Milibands, Clegg, the SWP leadership or any of the others being able to understand the emotional or spiritual aspects of socialism that are integral to Morris's version.

Stunted by 'politics', they've lost us because they no longer have anything positive to offer beyond technocratic fixes. There's no way of life embodied in modern politics. There is in rightwing politics, but it too consists of joylessness: the Tories and UKIP spend their time saying 'no' to things – foreigners, human rights, the poor, community, altruism. That's OK: beyond Major's lazy fantasy of old maids cycling to communion, capitalist politics has always been about material acquisition. But it's not true of us. The left has forgotten that Marx, for all his talk of materialism, was funny, cultured and engaged with more than just economics - that's why his work is shot through with Shakespeare. Economics was part of his philosophy of life, rather than the other way round. Once the economics was sorted, he thought, our social, spiritual and philosophical ones would be too: happiness was the end, not simply material comfort. Morris knew this, and acted on it.

So why have we ended up with a political culture which would rather have us fulminating against 'scroungers', immigrants, Europe and each other, or competing over who can inflict most austerity to win votes rather than a labour movement which has a positive vision of how life could be. Last week the government gleefully announced that it would rather let African migrants drown than address the causes of their desperation. Every dead African is a vote reclaimed from UKIP, or so it hopes.

When did we forget that politics could be a vehicle for aspiration and happiness rather than a game of beggar-thy-neighbour? I believe, like Morris, that my fellow citizens are essentially altruistic and well-meaning, that given reform of our industrial, political and social structures this altruism could be liberated to achieve a better society. This is why I teach, and why I teach in an unfashionable ex-polytechnic in an unfashionable town (that and being essentially unemployable otherwise). The lesson of Morris is that all are capable of blossoming under and deserve justice and beauty – it's a socialism of humanity rather than just of economics: this isn't the 'art will civilise the brutish lumpenproletariat' argument of people like Matthew Arnold. It's the idea that intellectual and emotional freedom means nothing if it's reserved for the powerful or the 'swinish rich'. Hence Jeremy Deller's Venice Biennale painting:

It's called 'We Sit Starving Amidst Our Gold' as was inspired by Roman Abramovich mooring his mega-yacht in the middle of Venice, obscuring the views adored by Morris's hero Ruskin, without a thought for others. So here's WM, hurling Eclipse (the world's second largest yacht: two helicopter pads, two swimming pools etc.) out of the way. Morris really does seem to be having a moment.

I'd give up if I wasn't an optimist. I just wish there was a political party I could vote for that feels the same way. Suggestions on a postcard?

Just for fun…pop, politics and teenagers

Here's a historical curio for you. I'm writing an article (possibly a book) on creative writing by politicians. As background research, I'm reading Steven Fielding's survey of politics in popular culture, A State of Play, which is fascinating. 

It's led me to Just For Fun, a 1963 teen movie which mixes musical numbers with a story of fun-loving teens being crushed by the pop-hating Right Party and cynically used by the secretly-pop-hating Left Party. Various incredibly bland pop groups appear performing songs with utterly lame slightly political songs, shoe-horned in to a terrible plot. For added joy, celebrity paedophile Jimmy Savile appears, as does Alan 'Fluff' Freeman. It's one of the corniest things I've ever seen, and it's great fun. By the end, the Teen Party wins the election…and destroys the country.





Another teens-meet-politics novel, Angus McGill's Yea Yea Yea was very freely adapted for Press for Time, a truly awful Norman Wisdom vehicle. Can you last for the whole trailer? 'Get an eyeful of les girls: they're busting out all over!'



Sadly I can't find any footage of Swizzlewick, the cynical and 'lewd' local politics satire (the Guardian: 'a new low in tastelessness') and only episode is believed to exist, but you can have a speech from Dennis Potter's 1965 Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, which was yanked from the broadcast schedules hours before it was meant to go out so that its satire could be watered down to avoid offending the poor political classes. 



I've recently read Wilfred Fienburgh MP's No Love For Johnnie (an MP who is 'the most unmitigated, grasping and self-important bastard...' encountered in politics) which one review reproduced on the cover declares 'the most cynical book ever written on any subject'. I haven't yet watched the film, but note that what was an X certificate in 1961 is now merely a 12. Whereas the contemporary reviewers condemned its focus on 'sordid mattress capers', the BBFC now merely notes 'moderate sex references and languages'. 

There's no footage from the film online, but here's some of the music – it's by Malcolm Arnold and therefore is great. 

Down the royal rabbit hole

Presumably you know that the heir to the British throne is prone to writing highly-opinionated letters to government ministers, despite the British having a civil war and various other shenanigans which eventually came to the conclusion that monarchs would be tolerated only so long as they kept their mouths shut on political matters. The deal was: they'd get the palaces, anthems, posh totty, medals, salutes and the illusion that everything would be done in their name, while Parliament got on with deciding what was right for the country and its population. The royals would agree to keep schtum.

Sadly, Prince Charles can't help firing off green-ink missives to ministers and even more sadly, they keep reading them. Unlike the rest of us, he has access and influence, without the other duties of a citizen (i.e. getting a job, paying taxes, suffering the consequences of bad government).

So quite reasonably, I thought, the Guardian asked under FoI legislation for copies of these letters. After all, if an unelected toff is getting privileged access, we should know what he's on about. Some of it might be inconsequential, some foolish (his views on architecture), some excellent (he's quite strong on environmentalism) and some dangerous (like the Secretary of State for Health, shockingly, he believes in homeopathy and various other quack medicines).

The government refused to release the papers, while the Information Tribunal ordered it repeatedly to release them: this has gone on for nine years and has now reached court.

What really shocks me is the government's reasons for not releasing these letters:

"This risk will arise if, through these letters, the Prince of Wales was viewed by others as disagreeing with government policy. Any such perception would be seriously damaging to his role as future monarch because if he forfeits his position of political neutrality as heir to the throne he cannot easily recover it when he is king."

This is what makes you subjects rather than citizens. Does the Prince of Wales disagree with government policy? Yes. Is he politically neutral? No, obviously not. I'd say he's a classic Tory radical actually. But the government is explicitly saying that you can't be allowed to see what he thinks because you'd lose faith in his political neutrality even though they know he isn't politically neutral and they know you know he isn't politically neutral (etc. ad infinitum). Their argument isn't that he isn't politically neutral, it's that you can't see the proof because then – in Bagehot's Victorian terms – the spell will stop working:

“We must not let in daylight upon magic…we must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants; she will become one combatant among many.”

You're children. You might know the truth and they might know the truth but if we say it out loud the whole foundations of British society will collapse!

Don't follow me, I'm only a teacher

One of my favourite thinkers in the educational world sent me a link to this pungent piece of polemic which I thought you might like to ponder (though most of you will find it indescribably boring). It's called 'Why Liberal Academics and Ivory Tower Radicals Make Poor Revolutionaries', and it's on a site called 'Youngist', which makes me want to stuff my fist into my mouth for a number of reasons. It's entertainingly written, however.

The revolution will not be cited. It will not have a bibliography, or a title page. The revolution will never happen in the seclusion of the ivory tower built by racist, sexist, and classist institutions. Professional academic researchers in the social sciences of many colleges and universities exploit the struggles of oppressed peoples. Oppressed peoples are left stranded with little to no resources after researchers leave their communities high and dry.

My heart sinks whenever I hear the word 'ivory tower'. It usually announces the author's ignorance of the complexity of education. I'm sure there are some institutions which aren't very interested in the outside world (hello, Bob Jones University) and there are certainly some which aren't at all bothered about widening participation, such as quite a few Oxford and Cambridge colleges). Plenty seek little more than to maintain the ideological status quo, notably the non-critical business and management schools. But there are awful lot of institutions, departments in institutions and individuals in departments who are not 'racist, sexist, and classist'. We have our faults and we work within structural constraints which make it harder to avoid these -isms, but we're getting there. There isn't an 'ivory tower', there's a rich ecosystem in which lots of HE organisations are neither secluded nor bigoted.

Do social scientists 'exploit the struggles of the oppressed' and leave them 'high and dry'? Certainly there's an old tradition of Western white men sitting in judgement on supposedly subaltern groups while thinking themselves progressive, but it's no longer a major strand, though of course I can only make observations from within my intellectual and ideological paradigm. I do wonder what it means to leave the oppressed 'high and dry'? In what way does the social scientist damage the struggle by observing and researching? I'm sure they could do more, but I'm not sure that it's the researcher's duty to lead the oppressed. After all, that would surely be racist, classist and exploitative? In my tradition, the oppressed don't need or want the leadership of the bourgeoisie, however sympathetic.

Despite the rather heated language, the argument gets a little more solid:

Researchers steal value from oppressed peoples by making them the subjects of theoretical research without lending them access to information that could better help their communities. Articles, books, and dissertations written about marginalized populations are written for academics, not working people, and as such have little impact on the people whose lives are the subject of this research. Liberal academics and social scientists are more concerned about developing the wealth of academic literature than addressing the immediate material concerns of the communities they research.

Another straw man. Perhaps the author hasn't noticed, but we're moving towards open access, and I make my work freely available to the oppressed masses yearning for the latest updates on what I think 1930s Welsh writers were doing. A lot of us are desperate to share our ideas with whoever will talk to us. Do we write for ourselves about 'working people'? I'd say that a) we are 'working people' and b) it's rather patronising to assume that 'working people' aren't capable of understanding and even joining us. As to this talk of 'impact' and 'immediate material concerns': what exactly is the sociologist, for example, meant to do? They find new ways of explaining what's happening to human communities, present the evidence and hope it informs public opinion and policy. The idea that all research by all 'liberal academics and social scientists' (weird category, by the way) is socially useless is just dumb: the leftwing equivalent of the America Know-Nothing party.

After that, the article gets nasty.

Penelope Herideen is a Sociology researcher in Western Massachusetts (MA) and a professor of Sociology at the local community college from which I recently graduated…Herideen’s research is important, and yet, she was hardly involved in student organizing campaigns against budget cuts that affect low-income students.

Now I don't know about you, but I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that one person should be named as the embodiment of an entire global profession's failings. It smacks of the lynch mob. Herideen gets no voice here, and her perspective goes unrepresented. Instead, the author apparently blames her for preventing 'the revolution'. Perhaps Herideen worked away at boring committees, doing her best. Perhaps Herideen feels that the campaign was strategically inept. Perhaps she thought that student leadership was important and didn't want to appear interfering. Perhaps she doesn't agree with the campaign at all. It's her business, and critiquing her like this is dishonest intellectually and personally cruel. Herideen doesn't have to be a revolutionary and an argument built on the author's personal dislike for her teacher is not progressive.

Then we get this:

Liberal academics and social scientists need to understand their effect on the communities and people they study. Oppressed people who are put under the magnifying glass of academic research have to live with real consequences after the researcher leaves. This is especially true in the field of women’s and ethnic studies — where class, gender, and race consciousness are a part of the research process. Researchers leave behind a stranded community with little to no resources to help them organize movements that will create real change.

I don't see any demonstration of 'effect' here. Leaving aside the difference between social science research and ethnography, in which the researcher participates in daily life, what are the 'real consequences' to that community? Are they left worse off than before the researcher turned up? If so - where's the evidence? Even more striking: why does the author assume that the 'stranded community' is so helpless? Everywhere I look, subaltern groups are developing their own strategies of resistance and fightback, whether it's Stoke's 'Mums on a Mission' or the syndicalist miners who wrote The Miners' Next Step after long shifts underground. This idea that oppressed groups are passive victims of dominant groups and selfish academics is patronising and reactionary.

But the author returns to the ad hominem attacks:

Tim Wise, a well-known anti-racist writer and activist receives thousands of dollars for speaking at various colleges and universities about the impact that white privilege and white supremacy have on communities of color. Wise has yet to give back to these communities in any real or substantial way, such as offering resources and support to the various communities he speaks of in his writings.

Again, one person is single out for his perceived failings, which come down to not 'giving back' in any 'real or substantial way'? Meaning? Money, I guess. The accusation is that rather than doing a serious and important job explaining racial oppression and proposing solutions, Mr Wise should open his wallet. Personally it sounds like he's using his talents very usefully, and I'm rather disturbed that our author presumes to know both what he should and does do with his money. One person's wallet can only go so far: one person's words can go a lot further. There's an assumption here that Wise's anti-racism is just a way of making money, and while I've never heard of him, I do worry that Ms Ouimette lacks good faith.

Sadly, she returns to the straw man argument:

Researchers in the fields of women’s and ethnic studies entering oppressed communities without any desire to change serious inequities are in direct contradiction of their supposedly “progressive” fields.

Who are these people? I haven't personally met every academic in the world, but I know enough to say that their motives and intentions are various; Ms Ouimette again seems to base general distrust on some contentious examples. She also presumes - perhaps because she's an idealist young person writing for The Youngist (as though 'the young' are an equally repressed group) - that all academics should be working for a revolution. I have to say that standing on the picket line last week, several hundred of my colleagues were notably absent. Not all of us are revolutionaries, kids. Lots of us want change without wanting a revolution and some of us don't even see the need for change. Sorry, but that's the way it is. There isn't a handbook that says all lecturers must be Maoists or whatever, so don't get disappointed when lots of us fail to live up to your personal fantasy.

Moving on, we get to the discourse of academia:

Try reading any academic text from your local women’s studies, ethnic studies, post-colonial studies, or anthropology department. The texts are almost always written so that only academics can understand. Some students and scholars call it “acadamese.” It is writing that needs to be decoded before it can be understood… Academics who use “ordinary language” are able to encourage oppressed groups to consider their own agency in the fight for social, economic and political justice. Their advisors and colleagues constantly berate academics that attempt to write in ordinary language because their writing is “too accessible.”

'Any'? 'Almost always'? Oh dear: that's the kind of comment that attracts my red pen. Sweeping statements are almost always (see what I did there) untrue. There is plenty of difficult – often bad – writing in academia, often produced by people who mistake bewildering discourse for mastery of a subject. Yet it's also true that complicated ideas require subtly and complicated explanation. All imagined communities have their interior modes of discourse (sorry Nicole, 'ways of saying things') which include and exclude. Some academics use this as a way to exclude, some don't. Some only talk in this way, lots of us don't, or don't always: it depends on the context and most of the academics I know desperately want to connect with other sections of society. And again, Nicole assumes here that 'oppressed groups' can't access this discourse – my institution believes that Knowledge is Power and equips our students to talk to power in its own language. We know they can do it and they succeed. If it wasn't such a horrible word, I'd call it 'empowerment'. Ironically, the existence of this article demonstrates our success: Nicole has a strong grasp of academic discourse and uses it fearlessly.  As to the claim that those whore write in ordinary language (whatever that is): to put it kindly, citation needed. Yes there are some abstruse corners, but it really isn't the worst problem facing the oppressed.

Academics use academic language and jargon to centralize knowledge and power in their hands. Academics would lose a certain amount of power if everyone had access to the same knowledge that they do. The division of labor in the ivory tower reinforces capitalist modes of production through individualized research and study that is hardly ever shared with those it most affects. This is how academia operates knowledge in the form of transactions that create restricted, instead of shared knowledge.

Well yes. They do. Or rather some of them do and more of us do without noticing. But I'm not certain what the 'power' referred to actually is. Do we 'hardly ever' share our findings? A contentious claim, at best. To be honest, we don't have a hermetic lore that we jealously guard from the proles. We talk of 'knowledges' actually, but that's a bit too modern for Nicole, who practices a dumb-ass version of Marxism described by Lenin as 'infantile leftism'.

Nicole finishes on a rallying note:

It is time to stop depending on NGOs and academia to create revolutionary praxis for us. They won’t. It’s up to us, the oppressed peoples of the world to demand resources for our communities that are being studied by those whose lives are spent in ivory towers. The revolution starts from below and works its way to the ivory tower. Only then will education be free and accessible for all.

Who is 'us'? Who appointed Nicole Voice of the Oppressed? She accuses academia of arrogating to itself the right to determine 'revolutionary praxis' without any evidence at all, yet she's quite happy to reply 'us' without any self-consciousness at all. I don't speak for anyone, and wouldn't dare. Nor should she. In particular, it's intellectually dishonest to claim that 'we' depend on 'NGOs and academia' for guidance: there are some armchair revolutionaries in common rooms across the world (hello, Alex Callinicos, Zizek and Noam Chomsky), but I don't see the world's proletariat queuing outside the bookshops eagerly awaiting news of the next phase: they're outside doing things already.

There are problems in and of academia. Some of them are connected to Nicole's points, but it's not a plot and it's not uniform. Nobody is 'an academic': we're citizens and workers and family members and parts of various communities. Academics have privileged access to discourse, but we lack agency, just like most people. We're part of the problem, but we're also part of the solution. Treating us like the enemy within really doesn't help.

Academics won't lead the revolution – but I don't see anyone else doing so either, and it's not because people like me are getting in the way. We're not the enemy, Nicole. I wish we had the authority and power you think, but we're marginalised and despised by the men with money and guns and laws, just like those for whom you presume to speak. Your revolution hasn't been spiked by people like me: that's just an excuse for your failure to persuade everyone that one is needed (which I personally feel it is). There will be revolutions, but they won't be yours and they won't happen where and when you or I think they will. If you want to help, 'Get Off Your Computer And Onto The Streets'.

How To Fail At Social Media The Tory Way

3 Easy Steps to mastery of social media.

1. Pick a hashtag. For example:

Just pluck it out of the air. Don't bother doing any preparation: conversations with people, that kind of thing. Once it's a #hashtag, it'll go viral of its own accord.

2. Watch the campaign take hold like wildfire:

Don't bother supporting it in any way, or engaging with other people on your social media network of choice. Just abandon it without making any effort.

3. Have a petition. Everybody loves petitions. Especially one that opposes 'cuts'.

This bit only works if you avoid mentioning that you're a government MP and minor functionary who voted for massive cuts to council funding. Genius: you impose cuts in Parliament where nobody can see you doing it, then oppose cuts in your constituency because the Council is run by a different party. Cue mucho coverage in your supportive local paper.

And the petition?

Wow! And who are these doughty campaigners for a larger state?

Gosh. So that's you, your 21-year old campaign manager who presumably did all this work, hopefully not this Aman Johal nor this Sam Paskin who tweets mostly about his collection of weaponry, and a local Tory student.

But don't worry if this campaign doesn't go viral. You can always have another poll demanding that local parking charges are reduced. That's a surefire winner:

38 Degrees, eat your heart out!

Behold! The virtuous politician!

It seems sad that I can name more lazy, morally bankrupt, cynical and machine politicians than principled ones. The United States, an experiment in running a 21st-century polity with 18th-century structures (and 13th-century science and morality to a great extent) has the benefit of Senator Elizabeth Warren, who scares the right, the misogynists and the corporate sector to death. Here she is attacking the undemocratic Republican government shut-down.

Just enjoy.

The Surly Worm: and other politicians' fictional horrors.

Hello everybody. I'm having the morning off to do some actual academic research. A conspirator and I were talking about books by politicians, and books by people who became politicians. I wonder if there's a paper in a serious literary examination of them. (For reasons of space, I'm going to ignore all the aristocrat-politician-poets of the early modern period. 

Interestingly, most politician-novels are by Conservatives and conservatives. Perhaps their usually superior classical education gives them greater facility with words, or perhaps the arrogance required to think they have a greater facility with words. Maybe Tories have more time on their hands than Labour politicians, whom I suspect are less moneyed and more engaged in grass-roots work. Lewis Jones's novel Cwmardy's Foreword rather defensively stresses that it was written in moments 'snatched' from the insanely busy life of a Communist activist and councillor. There's certainly something individualistic and ego-centric about novel-writing, whereas socialist politics used to be about the collective - hence there's a large and interesting library of novels which attempt to represent the collective experience within the confines of a form which privileges the individual. 

I think this is why so many Tories write political thrillers and bonkbusters. They're ideologically aligned with the concerns of popular fiction: individual men and women, good or bad, triumphing with some style and having a lot of sex along the way (I'm assuming this is compensating for their utter unattractiveness). Tories believe in the Great (or Evil) Man theory of history. For instance, left historians see Hitler as the nexus of and expression of more profound historical forces: individualist conservatives see him as uniquely evil (sorry, historians, for this facile summary, I know it's more complex than that). The result is that Tory novels often focus on mischievous, driven, selfish individuals, such as Chief Whip Francis Urquhart in Michael Dobbs' truly terrible House of Cards series. 

Who's out there? Well, the earliest ones are Whig MP Horace Walpole's delicious Gothic thriller The Castle of Otranto (1764), and later on Benjamin Disraeli's 'Condition of England' novels Tancred, Sybil, and Coningsby, and also Vivian Grey. Disraeli was a fascinating character: dissolute bisexual love life, literary talent; Jewish outsider (converted to Anglicanism at 12, but the social stigma remained)… and Conservative Prime Minister! I must confess to having only read Sybil, but it's a corker - it gave us the term 'Two Nations' to describe the gulf between rich and poor: he may have been a Tory, but by modern standards – depressingly – Benjy would be considered well to the left of the Labour leadership.  Oh, and I shouldn't forget Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, who produced a lot of epic poems in the 1820s: The Nun of Arrouca is, well, not exactly a classic. There's also Henry Brougham, a fascinating character. He co-founded the Edinburgh Review, writing on everything from literature to science. As a politician, he fought for electoral reform and the abolition of slavery, ending up as Lord Chancellor. He also invented the brougham, a type of carriage. He didn't write novels, but his output of reviews, criticism, autobiography etc was prodigious. He also apparently sent out his own death notice out of curiosity: he wanted to read his own obituaries. 

The other politician novelist of the early days was Matthew Lewis, author of The Monk. A slave-owner, diplomat, MP and author, Lewis wrote this Gothic horror in a few weeks while bored senseless as an attaché in the British Embassy to The Hague. Is it political? It is in the sense that it reflects the anti-rationalist, Romantic and emotional reaction. It's also fairly predictably anti-Catholic and therefore anti-European. It's also enormous fun. When I did my degree, we had a few lectures about the Augustans, in which the Gothic tradition was mentioned as a rather downmarket and unsavoury sideshow. Naturally I immediately read all the Radcliffe I could. After that, it was on to Otranto and then the real filth, like The Monk. Highly recommended. 

After that, a lot of the politician novelists get a bit respectable. I'm going to give an honourable mention to Trollope here: he was a civil servant whose only attempt to get elected ended in corruption, scandal and fourth place. But his work (currently very unfashionable) at its best captured the wider social movements in which politicians became caught up. Big, pointed, serious (but often funny) novels - great holiday reads, even if John Major did like them. 

Into the twentieth century and we get some interesting characters, some of them not even Tories and some of them novelists who became politicians. There's Herbert Coulston Gardner, a Liberal MP (later Baron Burghclere), prolific playwright and novelist whose fourth daughter married Evelyn Waugh. Her name was also Evelyn. The marriage didn't last, mostly because they both appear to have been vile people. The thriller writer John Buchan was briefly MP for the Scottish Universities before becoming Governor-General of Canada. Winston Churchill wrote Savrola, which is apparently awful, while CP Snow, Maurice Edelman (amongst other texts, Disraeli in Love) and Wilfred Fienburgh were all serious-minded Labour supporters who served as MPs or as Ministers in the Lords. 'Bitter' and 'louche' Fienburgh's No Love for Johnnie, about Johnnie Byrne the serious socialist MP embittered by a rightwing Labour administration, was even filmed with Donald Pleasance. I haven't got round to reading or watching Johnnie yet (sadly there are no clips on Youtube), but I'll let you know what it's like. It sounds very relevant to our own times. I've read some of Snow and Edelman's work: they're sober, thoughtful, interesting and very much not like later politicians' works. 

The Liberals also had a couple of writer-MPs: AEW Mason, now largely forgotten, and Hilaire Belloc, the very interesting if slightly ephemeral novelist, historian and poet of, amongst other things, Cautionary Tales for Children, which still amuse. Mason's school contemporary Anthony Hope also stood as a Liberal candidate, but lost. Still, he went on to write The Prisoner of Zenda, so he doubtless got over it. 

After that, I'm afraid we get to the truly ghastly. With one exception: Chris Mullins' A Very British Coup, in which the Establishment quietly deposes a socialist PM is a bit paranoid (it was written in the early 80s) but rather good, and has been adapted for TV twice. The rest of the generation now active is frankly awful. Take, for instance, Jeffrey Archer's novels, which are not quite as fantastic as his real life yet feel like they last even longer: poor quality plots designed to emphasise the Ubermensch qualities of special people - Tory to the core and an insult to literature. I read several in my teens while I was ill one summer. Even then I knew they were rubbish. Despite being imprisoned for perjury, this former Tory MP is still a Lord and gets to speak and vote on the issues of the day. 

Who else? Well, Douglas Hurd, the Etonian Foreign Secretary, has written novels since the 60s, often in collaboration with others, and some apparently decent histories. The thrillers he wrote before achieving high office were notable for what Mark Lawson calls 'rough and inventive' sex scenes, and his post-politics novels have followed the same path: gold lettering on the cover, implausible dialogue and glamorous sex on the inside. Only with political plots derived from his time in high office. What worries me about thriller writers who become Ministers is their understanding of the world. Did Hurd think the world was about titanic battles won in the bedroom, the casino and the knife-fight? Or is that what he wanted?

His close contemporary - but otherwise total opposite – is of course Edwina Currie, the loud minor minister famous chiefly for having an affair with John Major, for an egg safety scare, and now for her political thrillers. What is it about politicians and thrillers? Does it satisfy a gap in their working lives, or do they regret the years in sub-committees? The truth of political lives is that they're mostly really boring. Very few get to 'push the button' or unseal an 'Eyes Only' document that changes the world. Those that do (looking at you, Blair) are usually unstable fantasists who change the world for the worse. Perhaps Blair hasn't written a novel because there's no lack of self-deluding fantasy in his real life. No need for fiction. Anyway, Edwina's output doesn't stray far from the dictum that one should write about what one knows. Her debut was A Parliamentary Affair. 

'Then he came at her again. More urgently and hungrily, pushing his tongue down far into her mouth, reaching for her, clutching her body. There was no stopping now. He groaned and whispered her name.'

If you dare: here's Currie reading from her masterwork. Beware: bananas and breasts appear in the first sentence. Here's the opening of the Independent's review:

ANYONE who supposes that Edwina Currie's amazing first novel is the usual sort of kill-an-hour-on-the-beach codswallop had better think again: it is much, much worse than that. It seems extraordinary that the only political objection to the book so far has concerned the use of the House of Commons portcullis on the computer-enhanced calves of the cover girl. As a corny political saga it is not all that much worse than Jeffrey Archer, but it has huge hidden shallows and is a whole lot sleazier. Big-selling schlock-busters such as this usually want adjectives for the paperback, so here are a few: breathless, stupid, vain, petty, shrill, self-indulgent, cynical, vulgar and insulting. Will they do?

Though to be fair, Currie's protagonist is a Tory hypocrite: family values on the outside, enthusiastic adulteress on the inside.  And it is a useful compendium of clichés. Whenever you write a sentence in your own novel, check that Edwina hasn't used it, and you'll be fine. 

There are plenty of other contenders. Michael Dobbs's House of Cards was turned into a hugely successful TV series, centred of Whip Francis Urquhart who murders his way up the ladder and conspiratorially drops his catchphrase into the ears of journalists and readers: 'You might think that. I couldn't possibly comment'. Frequently quoting MacBeth and other literary characters, Urquhart appears to dignify the political-thriller genre, but it's a facade. The TV series was far superior to the novels which – I discovered last year – are nigh on unreadable. Like most Tory politicians who turn their hands to fiction, the novelist they most admire is Jilly Cooper. This is a mistake. Jilly is a noted Tory and she writes largely about the ruling Tory classes, but she can't write a sentence which wouldn't make a literate 7-year-old wet his pants with embarrassment. Like Currie, no cliché is left unexposed. Perhaps they should take a tip from Tory peer PD James, whose crime novels are at least elegantly written, even if they are based on a profoundly Tory (i.e. reactionary, bitter, patronising) world-view. Don't, on any account, read James's Austen-crime sequel Death Comes To Pemberley, which is by a long chalk the worst book I've read in recent years.

I haven't yet read any of the others. There's Louise Bagshawe, who as Louise Mensch was briefly an MP, though she didn't write novels during her 2 years in the House. Her novels are usually consigned to the chick-lit category, though I disapprove of the term. One day I'll read one, though I don't expect her work to be any more profound or convincing than her political pronouncements. Nor have I read Boris Johnson's Seventy-Two Virgins or Iain Duncan Smith's novel. Boris Johnson's book is interesting because it's a political comedy – perhaps not unexpected, but at least it's a change from the thrillers his peers have produced, and indicative of his mental landscape and approach to life. Only he and Chris Morris would make comedy from Islamic terrorism (in Boris's novel, they invade Parliament). Though after the Lee Rigby murder, he might not be so keen on people quoting from it. Duncan Smith's The Devil's Tune is sub-Archer from the sound of it: global plot, clichéd derivative title and hilarious reviews, such as this one from the Telegraph:

"And I honestly wish I didn't have to say this, because it feels like kicking a man when he is down... but, really, it's terrible. Human sympathy strains in one direction; critical judgment the other. Terrible, terrible, terrible."

You know you're in trouble when Ann Widdecombe, awful Tory minister and another novelists writer (though not, thankfully, of thrillers) can only say: 

The Devil's Tune by Iain Duncan Smith is scarcely the greatest literature of all time but as a thriller and easy read it will while away a plane journey (or, at 400-plus pages, a couple of plane journeys) perfectly pleasantly...the dialogue is severely cliché-ridden but people do have a habit of talking in clichés.

while Currie remarked that 'It's not exactly Tolstoy, is it?', which is a bit bloody cheeky because I'd be very, very surprised if she'd ever read any Tolstoy, let alone produced anything even remotely comparable. Yes, her books have words, covers and page numbers just like Anna Karenina, but the resemblance stops there. Currie also hailed Anne Widdecombe's debut as the product of 'a perceptive but warped mind'. Which may well be true. Widdecombe's work seems to echo those forgotten 19th-century 'improving novels' by genteel spinsters: removed from all cultural context and without any reason to exist as anything other than Christmas presents from the unimaginative to the almost-dead. 

OK, finally (as I'm sure you're all utterly bored by now), let's look abroad. The good ones first: Maria Vargas Llosa and Pablo Neruda had political careers of sorts, so we can include them. Havel was a playwright. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, French President, wrote a seriously weird novel which seemed to imply that he had an affair with Princess Diana. His great enemy Mitterand wrote erotic short stories. Lots of unsavoury and/or untalented Americans wrote novels as thinly disguised propaganda: Newt Gingrich is a prolific Confederacy apologist in his Civil War novels, but hello too to Scooter Libby, Richard Perle, Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart and Barbara Boxer. 

But I'm going to leave you with two final texts. The first is Sisters, by Lynne Cheney, wife of the future Vice-President. Set in the Wild West, it's a transgressive tale of (very chaste) lesbian love shot through with literary references to female friendships, lynchings, murder, knife-fights and Injuns: confused, badly-written but surprisingly feminist. You could buy a copy for £35 or so, or read the PDF for free. Here's a little taste.  

"The sampler you have began with Mrs. Barbauld's hymn--know it will be a gift I shall treasure always. How well her words describe our love--or the way it would be if we could remove all impediments, leave this place, and join together as the Ladies of Llangollen did. Then our union would be complete. Our lives would flow together, twin streams merging into a single river."
Sophie kept looking at the note when she had finished it. She had no idea what the reference meant, who the Ladies of Llangollen were, but it didn't matter. The note was clear. Miss Travers wanted Helen to run off with her, to leave James, perhaps the children, so they could go away together. But surely she couldn't have been serious. This was fantasy, wasn't it? But even if it were, Sophie argued to herself, this was fantasy of a sort one did not expect to find in correspondence addressed to one's sister. A woman pleading with another woman to go off with her--one might suppose it the plot of a French novel! But even as the thought occurred, Sophie knew it wasn't quite correct, because the letters were so unselfconscious; the writer seemed to have no awareness she suggested anything shocking. The ingenuousness reminded Sophie of something, but she couldn't put her finger on what it was. 

Interestingly, one of Cheney's later novels sees a Republican vice-president die of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress. Dick Cheney, of course, had heart problems while in office. And shot a friend in the face. 

Finally, here are a couple of lines from Graham Perrett's The Twelfth Fish. Perrett is a Labor MP in Australia, and the novel is his debut. Described by his own mother as 'way too rude', he held off publishing the sequel in case it scandalised the electorate and lost him his seat. Forget the unkind things I've said about the others: here we hail political fiction's own William McGonagall:

"Karen attacked my surly worm with gusto" (p167)
"I started to worry about Cylla's jaw muscles cramping' (p155)
"Methodically commencing fellatio" (p167)

 I'm wondering about a paper on The Aesthetic of the Politician's Novel. Given this standard, it'll be short…

Enjoy your weekend.

Eastleigh: everybody loses

Lots of feverish speculation around about what the Eastleigh by-election 'means' for 2015. So here's some more.

Nothing.

That's what this by-election result means for all the parties. Let's look at them one-by-one.

The Liberal Democrats.
It was their seat. The previous MP is probably going to prison for a serious criminal offence, and the campaign was conducted in the midst of a media frenzy about an obscure apparatchik's (alleged) disgusting treatment of women. Now they're going round saying that if they can win under those circumstances, they'll be fine in the 2015 election. I reckon this is nonsense. It was a straight fight between Lib Dems and the Tories: two hated government parties. Angry Tories have an easy protest vote in UKIP. The kind of Lib Dems in constituencies like Eastleigh wouldn't vote Labour as a protest because it would let the Tories in. I don't think this means that they'll be OK in constituencies up and down the country in 2015 - just that they may do better in straight Tory v Lib Dem marginals. Eastleigh was a safe Lib Dem seat which is now a marginal one: on this kind of 14% drop, all their marginals will vanish.

The Tories.
They ran a dreadful campaign, in which their candidate was a UKIP clone, kept away from public scrutiny after making offensive and outlandish statements. They may have learned that shifting to UKIP territory on Europe only helps UKIP, but I doubt it. They've learned that the Lib Dems are still preferably in many voters' eyes to the Conservatives, but that's probably about it. But this was a by-election: control of the government wasn't in doubt, and I think they can probably assume that many UKIP votes were cast safe in that knowledge. When it comes to electing a government, lots of UKIP supporters will vote Tory to keep out the Lib Dems and Labour. The core vote strategy won't get the Tories a majority, but I don't think the UKIP sky is falling on their heads. They thought it was, hence the campaign they ran – and look at the result.

Labour.
It's a long time since Eastleigh was Labour territory. Lots of Blairites and Tories will be attacking the current leadership for managing nothing more than a 0.2% increase in the vote. I'm more sanguine. A very short campaign doesn't give a new-look party time to persuade any electorate of anything. Labour just doesn't have a natural constituency in Eastleigh yet, and expectations of a surge of enthusiasm were ludicrous. The protest voters were rightwingers who were never going to put their crosses in the Labour box. I also think that the despite all the evils the Liberal Democrats have perpetuated through joining the coalition, voters would still rather see and Lib Dem winning than a Tory. Therefore I think some Labour supporters will have swallowed a mouthful of vomit and voted tactically for the Lib Dems.

I have no doubt that if a Labour MP went under a bus in the Northern heartlands, Lib Dem and Tory candidates polling 9% or whatever would be shrugging their shoulders and accepting it rather than beating themselves up for not pulling off a miracle.

UKIP.
No doubt they're on the rise, but I'm not convinced this is a breakthrough. For all the reasons delineated above, I think this is a protest vote which won't be replicated or bettered in general elections when the government of the country is at stake. The Tories will tack towards UKIP because the tiny rump Tory membership is overwhelmingly barking mad, and UKIP will continue to operate as an amusing, sometimes dangerous, ginger group. This was an election about disgust with the mainstream political parties and Farage capitalised on it, but it's a high water mark. I think UKIP will suck away some Tories and allow Lib Dem and Labour candidates to win marginals: the Tories will adopt a core vote strategy to counter that and we'll get used to coalition governments (because the Tory core vote isn't enough to win outright) and some UKIP voters will return to the Tories to keep Labour out.

Additionally, Farage's crew should expect more scrutiny in future. I was amused to see him blithely assert the general criminal tendencies of Romanians and Bulgarians yesterday: yet the UK locks up more people than Romania and Bulgaria, which suggests British people have a greater natural propensity to commit crime.

Even more interestingly, if UKIP was an independent country, it would far outstrip every other country on earth for its rate of imprisonment. Currently, the United States has a higher rate of incarceration than any other country on earth: 716 per 100,000. So 0.716% of Americans commit crimes so heinous that they go to prison. But what of UKIP? 10% of UKIP's MEPs went from Parliament to Prison (including Tom Wise the thief and Ashley Mote – ironically – the benefit fraudster: Nikki Sinclaire has been arrested for fraud so the stats might actually be heading upwards). If I were Romania and Bulgaria, I'd be banning UKIP members from entering the country for fear of a crime wave.

An open letter to my local council

Sylvanian Families Against the Cuts. No idea who did it, but s/he is a genius.

Dear Council,
thanks for your expensively produced survey about what you're rather offensively terming 'The Cuts Challenge 2013-2014', as though it's a little bit like The Apprentice or Masterchef. While it's very lovely that you're asking someone with a PhD in Welsh Literature to help direct your economic policies, I'm not sure it's going to work, and I've a few problems with what you're up to.

Let's have a closer look, shall we?

The Government is abolishing the national Council Tax Benefit Scheme from April of next year.  To replace it, each council has to design its own local scheme.
This is made more difficult by the fact that, at the moment, the government meets the whole cost of council tax support.  In future, it will pay under 90% of the bill, based on what it contributed in 2011-2012 – a 12% cut.

OK. I can't quite tell whether you're subtly indicating that this isn't your fault but you're too scared to openly criticise the government because you think some voters hate the idea that anyone gets benefits at all. Personally, I think it's sickening. The government's plan is to make councils institute the most savage cuts, thereby hoping that voters will punish whichever party runs the local authority. As that's mostly Labour, it's a particularly dishonest and sneaky tactic. The idea is that rich Tory councils which don't have to do much because all the poor people have or will be deported, won't have to make cuts because they don't do much anyway. Meanwhile communities hardest hit by the government's economic mismanagement and vicious ideology will be hit again - and most people won't take the time to work out who is really at fault.

The council has been left with a difficult decision to make. It must either reduce the amount paid in council tax benefit fairly to recover this shortfall, or cut funding to essential council services.

Hmmm. The passive 'has been left' is reasonable enough. It's been dumped with making cuts of £3.2m. Not sure about the rest though. 'Essential' is a subjective term, as is 'fairly'. Let's see what 'fairly' means, shall we?

The council is proposing a scheme which passes on some of the cut in government funding.  As people of pensionable age are protected from reductions in benefits, all those affected will be of working age.

This must be some new definition of 'fairly', one with which I was unfamiliar. It seems that being old is somehow superior to being younger, however rich the older person and however poor the younger person. We all know why pensioners are protected. Politicians will come out with all sorts of guff about contributing to the public purse over their working lives yada yada yada but that doesn't apply to council tax. Pensioners are protected because a) they vote more than everyone else and b) they vote Conservative more than everyone else. So it's essential that even the richest pensioners in the West of the city are protected by national laws from sharing the pain. So the poor people of working age will be hit harder, and they'll hate the council and either vote Tory or not vote at all. Quite frankly, from the government's perspective, either result is good for them.

What next?

The council believes that it has come up with the fairest scheme possible under the circumstances.  Before going ahead, however, we want to consult with local people to explain how it will work and – most importantly – to get their views.

Ah, I love the smell of cowardice and/or tokenism in the morning. This isn't a delegational democracy, it's a representational one. We elect people we hope know what they're doing. We don't expect them to beg us to help them out with ideas because most of us are untrained and beaten down with work and life. When they start holding consultations, we should assume that either it's an attempt to share the blame for whatever they've already decided to do, or a sham. Or a bit of both. After all, 'get their views' is a long way from 'acting on'. Cuts are going to be imposed. Organised groups will lobby to protect their privileges or services. Unorganised ones - however worthy - are going to be hit hard.

Anyway, what's with the rush to consultation?

We understand that you may be surprised that the council is launching another consultation on council tax and perhaps a little concerned that the consultation period is shorter than usual.
The reason for this is that the council’s financial position has been changing continuously in the past few months as new pressures have emerged.  There is a serious concern that we may not be able to meet our legal obligation to set a balanced budget for 2013-2014 unless decisive action is taken.

Aha. Here it is. In short, we're screwed. Broke. I've a lot of sympathy for the council here: despite the usual incompetence and waste found in local democracy, the fact is that this is a poor area made poorer by the central government's viciousness. One solution, of course, is to refuse to set a legal budget. The Liverpool Labour council did this in the 1980s as a symbolic gesture. Lots of Labour councils did it in the 1930s in protest against Means Tests and all sorts of appalling attacks on the poor. Would it work? Not in any practical way: the government would impose a punitive budget. But symbolically, it would be an act of defiance rare in a democracy which has largely abandoned principle and ideology to the Tories. While the government applies the Chicago/Pinochet playbook pretty much just because it can, our local representatives have allowed themselves to become technocrats, passing on the pain with little more than a grimace of disaffection. Politics has become too reified: current parties have moved away from the battlefield of ideas, while councils have become part of the state's machinery rather than representatives of the local population. The government talks about decentralisation, but everything it does, from council tax to education, is about central control. Local government becomes hollowed out and bereft of ideas.

What's actually being done?

The council proposes to restrict the maximum amount of Council Tax Benefit that a person can claim to 91.5% of what they are liable to pay. 

This proposal will affect everyone of working age, employed and unemployed alike.
People on disability benefits as well as those with children will also see a reduction in their council tax benefit.  This means that they will have to pay more council tax than they currently do or in some cases pay council tax for the first time.  

So however poor you are, there's a bill coming, regardless of whether you can pay it or not. I don't see any more jobs coming round the corner. State benefits are being reduced in real terms thanks to yesterday's Autumn Statement. So if you're in a low-paying job, you're going to get poorer. Unsurprisingly, yesterday's cut in corporation tax means that the company which uses the benefits system to subsidise your low wage is going to make more money.

This council tax benefit cut isn't fair in any sense I understand: a section of society already impoverished is going to be hit again, with no clear sign of how they're meant to make up this shortfall. This is why I'd abolish benefits for the working poor tomorrow in one move: make the minimum wage a living wage. Companies have got used to massive executive pay packets and enormous profit margins by avoiding their taxes and squeezing those at the bottom. If they had to pay their workers properly, we could let them have low taxes because we wouldn't need to pay benefits for workers. Simples!

What would I do if I were the council? I'd add some bands to the Council Tax rating. There are only eight, with the top one covering properties valued at over £320,000 in 1991. Property prices have risen massively over the past 20 years, so there's plenty of room at the top for more bands, or a general revaluation.

For instance, the handy House Prices Index calculator over at the Nationwide calculates that a house worth £320,000 in 1991 would now be worth £832,000: a 160% increase in value without taking inflation into account. That's a hell of a boost, and all without the homeowner making any further contributions to local government.

But this is the one thing governments and councils are agreed on: upwards revaluations lose votes. Rich people vote. So there's absolutely no way that rich people will be asked to pay more even though there's a strong case to be made that they've had a very easy ride since the Council Tax was instituted. Sadly, I don't think councils can individually change the banding system.

So if councils can't just tax the rich more based on their property values, what should they do? I'd start looking at clever local taxes. A congestion charge would do nicely. Nobody can avoid the ring roads round here. Slap a whacking great charge on large, heavy and powerful vehicles so that all the 4x4s and bourge-mobiles cough up or start taking the bus like the rest of us. Invent a golf club charge. Tax antisocial activities: gum-chewing, off-premises alcohol sales and cigarette outlet sales. Perhaps a sales tax. Pollution and higher waste disposal charges so that consumption, particularly of socially-damaging goods, attracts a charge. If people stop doing these things, the local infrastructure won't need so much cash anyway. I'd also cut back on business relief rates so people like my local MP, who made millions from property speculation, doesn't get a subsidy from us if he'd rather leave property empty than lower his rents. Sadly, the Chancellor extended this tax relief yesterday.

There are plenty of things our council can do. Sadly, it lacks the spine and the imagination to do any of them. Instead, the poor will be hit again and the rich voters will continue to be cosseted.