Careers Advice for Would-be Dictators Part 2

Dictatoring is a job which falls in to two distinct phases: getting the job and keeping the job. They require separate skills. Yesterday: Getting the job. Today, part two

Keeping the job.

There's no getting away from it; there is always an element of performance, a willingness to go on the stage when other people won't. It is sometimes said that this is a product of the media age meaning 'as recently as the 20th century'. Not so. The performance element has always been there. Elizabeth I realized that she had to appear at Tilbury even though it meant some risk to herself. There's no suggestion she used a body-double. Which ever version of the speech was delivered, the main thing is she was there, attempting to say what the forces needed to hear.

The duff speaker who will go on stage trumps the good speaker who hides. You cannot do this job if you aren't prepared to go out and hoof it to the best of your ability. You don't have to be a world-class actor; the benchmark is Delia Smith.



Perhaps the public ought not be so enamoured of performers, but they are, so there's no point in railing against it. Resign yourself to presentation lessons; you, the irresistible force, have just run up against the immovable object of public expectations.

Once you've got the speaking thing nailed there are six things which have to have their bumps felt and, yes, they are all trying to kill you. It goes with the territory.

* Power apparatus: that's the armed forces, the secret police and the civilian police
* The judiciary and the bloody lawyers
* The economy
* Furriners
* Parliament or equivalent council
Lastly, depending on your regime
* Turbulent priests

The modern dictator will usually keep a pet council for the look of it. Like any pet you want it fed properly and brushed but it is is the pet and you are the master, so it can get do tricks when told or it will be put in the naughty cell and have its privileges removed.

Likewise, the flippin' judges and lawyers are necessary for "resolving" civilian disputes but they are reptillian in nature and don't respond to training the way the mammalian councils do. The best thing to do with them is to keep them very cold as they are more docile when chilled, i.e. don't keep pumping public money at them. Warm one up only when you need it.

Think of them as Gremlins which, as you know, must never be fed after midnight or allowed to get wet.



A key mistake with managing the judiciary is to give it the idea that it can rule on your decisions. The first rule you need to establish is

"This is not justiciable because it isn't for you to question me, the duly appointed dictator. Back in your tank."

Let the judiciary do the bottom-sifting job they are supposed to do; making public tutting noises about crime. They can encourage your civilian police force stay in line and not taking kick-backs, although they seem myopic about spotting corruption if it wears a white coat or a blue uniform.

The civilian police force is important because they will keep things profitable. It is vital that they are kept from corruption if at all possible because they tend to attack the economically active part of your dictatorship on account of that's where the money is.

Even Vladimir Putin is fed up with the levels of corruption.

The economically active part of your economy is a mix of people who work and those who finance it. Now, the police will have to hamper some forms of work, usually prostitution and drug dealing, and you will have to take a view on whether you want them to do that or if you want them to regulate and control both those activities. Drug dealing and prostitution are going to happen whatever you do, so you'll just have to decide whether to get involved or not. Dictators need not pay any heed to what anyone else says; that's the point of being a dictator. Ultimately what you will be judged by is if you allow these things to become a nuisance.

The turbulent priests are bound to give you an ear-bashing on this point, though. They are also a useful method of social control so you will probably have to put up with their twittering; they are a flock of bird-brained screaming peacocks. Think of them as the intermediate stage of feather boas, hats and pillows. Watch out for the occasional ostrich. Big buggers, can break your arm with a blow of their beak, but even they can be turned in to fans for strippers.



A word on Furriners. It is impossible to give hard rules about this because, as the lawyers say, so much is fact-sensitive. In general Furriners or their friends will have annoyingly large amounts of money which obviously should be yours, so the first aim is to get that money. This means you may have to be nice to them but an effective dictator knows how to be strategically nice as well as ruthlessly unpleasant. It is unnecessarily restrictive to confine yourself to one or other behaviour; just work out where you want to be and then do what is necessary to get there.

The effective dictator follows the rules laid down by St Geldorf: just give us the fockin' money, although not necessarily in those words. Later there can be a settling of scores. Purely as a rule of thumb, if you have to shoot furriners, try to make it the poor ones. Avoid over-using your armed forces. They are a sentimental lot; their loyalty can be relied on until the day they suddenly turn on you.

Which brings us to the secret police. These are your score-settlers and no dictator manages without them. This means they are very nearly your equals and can be a source of opposition. However, they are by nature 2ic otherwise you'd already be floating face-down.

Think of the secret services as a pitbull terrier. Not too bright, very agressive, with some behaviour problems due to a tendency to perceive attack even when there isn't one, but one heck of a killing machine when under proper control. Your job, like any responsible dog worker, is to keep the animal lean and to heel. The dog will thank you for it.

Yesterday: Careers Advice for Would-be Dictators, Part 1, Getting the Job

Careers Advice for Would-Be Dictators part 1

Catherine the Great. She married in to the ruling family and then the CEO, her husband, suddenly died of someone.
...............

Dictatoring is a job which falls in to two distinct phases: getting the job and keeping the job. They require separate skills.

Today, part 1, Getting the Job

Getting the job depends very much on chance.

Politics, economics, outside events, the behaviour of your opponents, mad bastards on your own side; all these change what we careers advisors call 'the environment'. Many of the world's dictators talk as if they could control these, but that is just their ego talking. An ego the size of Basingstoke is the minimum character requirement for a dictator.

Cuddle-up to power while young, but do be careful not to over-identify with any single source of it. Power-sources such as the military or political parties have an unpredictable habit of self-destructing. People will accuse you of not being clubbable; true, but you also won't find yourself with your career over before it even starts.

At this early point in the dictator's career it is more like being the 2nd-in-charge officer on a complex ship on a choppy sea with a mardi crew and half the stores gone. Even that is a simple job in comparison because at least at sea there is only a limited number of people to contend with, unless the pirates show up.

Several notable dictators claim to have been marked out for greatness from childhood but this is wishful thinking. Had they been recognized young, they'd have been drowned in the bath. Instead, in their larval phase they resemble the weedy specky nerdy type with a grasp of detail which makes them valuable to their elders, and so invited to the big table to do the donkey work.

It's only later that the dictator separates himself - and it nearly always is himself although there are such things as women dictators - from the pack.

That is the first career hurdle for a dictator; looking just useful enough to stay alive but not becoming the natural slave-brain, the one which does all the work but doesn't get credited. At some point you may have to choose: do I want to achieve my aims from this position, or do I want to be Leader?

If you are dictator material this won't even be a question for you. Rather, you'll be worried about recruiting your own reliable seconder and finding all the ways you can be in pole-position when the current leader (or nearest approximation) falls out of the window having decided on a breath of fresh air. Windows are terribly dangerous, architecturally. Almost as bad as lamp posts. That's why the streets are often dark in dictatorships.

In general, dictators don't see being 2ic as tolerable for long, let alone negotiable. It's not something which is open to dialogue. You might as well offer vegetables to a toddler, and for much the same reason; toddlers don't like vegetables and they do like control.

"And I'm President of the United States, and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli!"

Howled George Bush Snr. to the delight of US Teletubbies as one of the most powerful men on Earth got a right cob on, thus illustrating that wiser, better men often don't find themselves in office.

The first quality of a dictator, then, is a certain impervious disregard for rationality, proportionality, or any of the considerations which paralyse brighter mortals. Being terribly clever is not the most important thing. Make the clever-cloggs your 2ic but keep a very sharp eye on them. Don't want them getting ideas about doing your job.

The second quality of a dictator is luck, because with those tendencies there's a fair chance you are going to kill yourself accidentally, and quite young. But then so will your competitor dictators, which is why there aren't that many of them.

The third quality is unlimited energy. This allows you to outpace any enemies who, although not direct competitors, would like to see you out of it. While they are sleeping you will be building networks.

That checklist again:

Ego the size of a market town (minimum)
Not thick but far from clever
Obstinate
Lucky
Energetic

Lastly, you will need the spooky ability to recruit a core of the right sort (i.e. useful) followers early on, when you do not yet have the power to dispense patronage. Even those who are themselves acting as your patrons must think themselves privileged at that point.

This used to be much simper in the days of the aristocracy, using the hereditary principle to attract support. That is rarely allowed now. We have had several effective dictators this way, but unfortunately it also brings out a crop of noxious half-wits. Then again, so does democracy and the secret vote-rigging of the EU. Each claim legitimacy to do the job badly. Why can't they just base their claim to keep their job on the basis of competence?

Still, we don't do hereditary succession any more, except if your name is Bush. Or Benn.

Tomorrow: part II, Doing the Job

The Martyrdom of St Barnabas & Carol Hill

St Barnabas has a claim to be the natural saint of the bloggosphere and whistleblowers. He was tortured then stoned, or perhaps burned, to death for talking to the public.

The blogger Fr. Mark White notes that Barnabas may have been as prolific as St Paul, but St Paul was the one who got the attention and whose work survived and made it in to the official list. The MSM, if you like. St Barnabas' work seems to have mostly vanished and he has to make do with the credits others give him.


He's remembered in many churches, though. For instance, at Great Tey in Essex there is a church dedicated to him.

You might think that a vicar of a church invoking such a virtuous man would have an instinctive reaction when faced with someone telling an unwelcome truth. They would rise up and defend the them, especially if it concerned a child.

In June 2009, seven-year-old Chloe David was involved in a case of bullying at the Great Tey Voluntary Controlled CoE primary school, the one associated with St Barnabas Church and its vicar the Reverend John Richardson.

Chloe was tied to a fence with a skipping rope and lashed by four boys. Now, children play rough but this is exceptional. It is sufficiently serious that it may be an S&M act-out, which means you have to record it in full and make sure social services know in case they want to launch further enquiries as to where this game originated.

The dinner-time supervisor Carol Hill found Chloe. Mrs Hill is a first aider and has a duty to the child and her parents which, if ever there is a choice, takes precedence to her duty to the school. She wrote in the school record:

"Chloe has been tied up and then hit with a skipping rope – red marks on right leg and right wrist".

Hill reported it to her employers and left them to do their job.
The notice sent to the parents by Headmistress Deborah Crabb reads:

"She was hurt on the right leg and right wrist with a skipping rope"
"Chloe was hurt by some other children so to reassure you they had all missed part of their lunchtime today and their parents have been informed."

This is not quite the same thing. 'Hurt' implies playground accident. We've all had those. This was deliberately inflicted injury by a coordinated group. It also neglects to mention the bondage.

At tribunal, Crabb explained the boys insisted they were playing "Guards and Prisoners". So she was always fully aware that this was a coordinated playing-out of a fantasy by four boys whipping a small girl. In no sense could it be interpreted as an accident.

When Carol Hill, who also volunteered at the Beavers, bumped in to Chloe's mother, it transpired that Mrs David didn't appreciate how potentially serious the incident had been, nor the sexual connotations involved, nor that it had been in the nature of an attack.

Chloe's father demanded a copy of the original report and furiously withdrew the children from school, citing that the Crabb had attempted to cover up potentially serious abuse and so couldn't be trusted to deal with real abuse by adults if that ever occurred.

It was further suggested Crabb had acted in this way because one of the children who had been involved in the attack was the son of a governor. What else would she cover up? This is how child abuse continues to happen, everybody making excuses for it and closing ranks to protect their buddies instead of the victim.

In response, the school sacked Carol Hill, claiming that she had broken the child's confidentiality by talking to the parents. Unless Hill had some reason to suspect the parents were the dangerous ones, she had an obligation to speak to them if she believed them to have been misinformed, which trumps her obligation to the school.

She's there to protect children, not to save Crabb's face, or the face of another governor whose child was involved in the victimization. Child protection trumps employment law.

The school also claimed that Carol Hill had no right to go to the papers over their attempt to mislead the parents, and that she did so as a matter of personal antipathy to Crabb. So what?

Crabb tried to lie to the parents and untrustworthy governors colluded with her in that. It is a matter of public interest that a head deliberately misled parents and then tried to plead confidentiality in this betrayal of child protection. At no time could it have been in Chloe's interest to lie to her parents. But it was in the interests of some of the other children and the school.

On that sacking panel were three people from the C of E school’s governing body: John Wickes, Cathy Rayner and the local vicar, Rev John Richardson.

Unfortunately, eighteen months later, that which is glaringly obvious to anyone who isn't an employment lawyer also escaped the Employment Tribunal in Bury St Edmunds, another place where a martyr wasted his blood and is probably wondering if it was worth it.

Carol Hill has an inconclusive ruling which seems to say that technically, they could have sacked her for not keeping schtum about potential child abuse, even though every bit of child protection advice says she must speak out, not keep secrets. It's just they followed the wrong procedure for doing it. Yeah, right, a complete accident and not an example of grown professionals deliberately flouting employment law and child protection protocols.

Anybody with a lick'o'sense would rather Carol Hill looked after their children than this poisonous gang. It follows, of course, that Mrs Hill is the one who might be banned from volunteering with the Beavers and could end up with the social services arguing she can't have access to her own grandchildren.

She is the test case for the vetting and banning list. The school will have to notify what ever the Independent Safeguarding Authority becomes that she was sacked for gross misconduct, or would have been if they hadn't got the procedure wrong. (There is still some argument over what the heck it means).

But the whole point is that if she had a choice at all, she made the correct one in putting her duty to the child ahead of her duty to the employer. Rev Richardson should remember that; his duty to God is ahead of his duty to the Church.

As Carol Hill appears not to want to take it to Appeal, that is the end of this case. However, the political ramifications will carry on because now it looks like any employee who discovers wrong doing, especially abuse against children being covered up, is unable to go to the police without it being gross misconduct. The culpability ought to be in keeping quiet, not in talking.

Come on Michael Gove and Eric Pickles, get yer fingers out. This wants sorting. We can't have a big society if people like Mrs Hill aren't allowed to volunteer and exercise their role in child protection. Even Ed Balls - even Ed Balls - knew this case was rotten and wrote to the school to say so.

There is a way, via the admirable Anna Raccoon, to register support for Carol Hill and to wish her well and give her a pat on the back. Send her the equivalent of a box of chocs, more if you can afford it.

Update: Anna is still accepting donations to pass on to Carol Hill.

That's not a knife - epilogue

Back in August 2010 the post That's not a knife....THAT'S a knife discussed the case of Rodney Knowles who had been arrested in February 2010 for having a knife in his car. He had pleaded guilty to that in April, but complained bitterly to the press, who took up the story.

The result was that the next month, May, the police found themselves having to explain to holiday makers that an offence would depend on whether there was or was not a good purpose for having the knife of the limited permitted dimensions.

They maintained, however, that they were right to make the arrest and that as Mr Knowles had pleaded guilty to the bare offence, no further details had come out in court. Mr Knowles' own representative, Jolyon Tuck said in exasperation:

"I can say quite safely Mr Knowles has no comment to make."

In July Knowles was charged with serious sexual offences which allegedly took place many years earlier. They included grooming, rape, sexual assault and threats which meant the victims dared not complain.

This week the trial was finally concluded and Knowles was convicted of eight counts of rape, 15 counts of indecency with a child and seven indecent assaults. The threats against the victims had been so effective that they had not been able to go to the police for decades. Knowles pleaded not guilty and maintains the accusations were fabrications. Knowles will serve at least 10 years in prison before he is eligible to ask about parole.

There is a difficulty with what are termed 'historic abuse' cases in that time really does put a question mark over testimony, so it might thought that this is a case of a disabled old man being victimized.

That's not what the whisper-wall says, although you don't have to believe it. It says that Knowles was a wrong'un who used his disability to either make people think he was a victim or to make himself immune from complaints.

Recommendation: Save your sympathy on this one.

Press reports of the conviction

The Herald

The Express

Update: 25/2/11 h/t Jolly Lion in the comments

My living hell at hands of violent and bullying father

Update: 25/2/11 Jolyon Tuck - an apology

Marriage a la mode - all the fun of the law

The first effects of the Bull ruling are being felt. Hotels which provide exclusively gay male accommodation, thus distinguishing themselves in the market, have had their business model damaged. This is what the Guyz Hotel "Gay Men Only" said last week.



The screen-grab is fuzzy, but it is from Guyz Hotel index (not the booking terms and conditions) and it says [my emphasis]:

Guyz Hotel has been run as a gay hotel for the past 24 years, and is one of the most popular and longest established gay hotels in Blackpool, catering for gay couples, singles and groups who want a gay environment with quality accommodation. Previously voted 3rd best gay hotel in UK!!

This could mean that it happens to be run with the preferences of gay patrons in mind. That is being 'gay friendly'. This is not the same as saying: "this is exclusively for gay people". It continued:

Guyz is a GENUINE Gay Hotel. That means it is a hotel owned and run BY gay people FOR gay people but beware there are some straight owned ‘Pink Pound’ friendly Hotels locally that display the pride flag trying to cash in on gay money, and it isn’t until you check in that you discover they may be mixed, or even have STAG & HEN parties staying.!!!

No doubt about it then. They won't accept heterosexuals and they won't accept lesbians. They discriminate on gender and sexual orientation; a guest has to fulfill both conditions to be admitted.

If you are specifically looking for a Gay Hotel be sure to ask if it is exclusively gay when booking to avoid possible disappointment

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother about a hotel choosing to run itself for gay men and failing to provide any objective and reasonable justification for doing so. There are a great number of hotels, so even if this one was discriminatory towards me and/or Mr Raft, it wouldn't matter unless a fair percentage of hotels refuse to serve us. In the meantime, Gabrielle's says I can't take Mr Raft in there either, not even if we are both gay.

Still, if that's the price of establishing a profitable business then I can live with it because I'd rather see people rich and happy than poor and miserable. The explicit sexism and heterophobia just doesn't make all that much difference to customer over entire hospitality sector, but it makes a heck of a difference to the hotelier at the modest end of the market where there are large numbers of similar hotels and only limited ways of distinguishing a service.

The EHRC dances round this by summarizing that sometimes it is possible to provide services on a discriminatory basis but that all differences in treatment must have an objective and reasonable justification. (See full guide). Can Mr Raft be refused entry to The Pink House hotel in Brighton objectively (because he's a man) and reasonably so? I doubt it.

For as long as the Bulls down in Cornwall have been tangling themselves up in knots over who can sleep in a double bed, the Guyz Hotel has been trading on an explicit separatist ethic. They cheerfully took up a registration as 'gay men exclusively' through a trade association, BAGS. (To use that link, do a search on the criteria "exclusively gay guests", meaning the website provider and the hotel both believe it is legal and intend to discriminate on sexual orientation.)

However, public money was spent by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on bringing a private civil case to test the implementation of a regulation in a statutory instrument which followed quietly behind the primary legislation.

John Wadham of the EHRC is crystal clear on this: if you are in a commercial relationship then you can't discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation and civil partnership is marriage for the purposes of claims under this statutory instrument.

That Regulation again:

Statutory Instruments 2007 No. 1263 EQUALITY
The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007
Made 17th April 2007 Coming into force 30th April 2007

There are explanatory notes at the bottom of the made version and an explanatory memorandum attached, which sets out the intentions of the act and is much easier to read before going on to the Act, although what is intended is not the same as what happens when the technical game of legal ping-pong starts.

5.11 The Regulations will impact positively on people in the lesbian, gay and bisexual community by providing a route to redress against discrimination. However, it will also have a positive impact on members of the heterosexual community, as they too can seek redress for discrimination where, for example, they are refused access to a pub because they are not gay.

So the intention of the Act was that public-access places such as the Guyz Hotel could be sued under this regulation for refusing to accept a heterosexual guest and that their ability to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation would be removed from them. If they continue to advertise on that basis they are either discriminating unlawfully or advertising in a misleading fashion.

Perhaps somebody rang John Wadham (Helpline: 0845 604 6610) and asked about wording on the website because this week Guyz Hotel have hurriedly changed their welcome page which now reads:



Is this enough to keep them on the right side of the law? Regulation 10 states:

Discriminatory advertisements

10.—(1) It is unlawful to publish, or to cause to be published, an advertisement which indicates (expressly or impliedly) an intention by any person to discriminate unlawfully.

There are exceptions and exclusions to this but the general commercial guideline holds, so can any hotel being run for profit hold itself out as a gay establishment? To test that, would a hotel be able to advertise itself as a straight establishment? We haven't had the test case yet and the interesting thing here is that there is only one body which can bring it :

3) Proceedings in respect of a contravention of this regulation may be brought only—

(a) by the Commission,

which probably means that no matter how offended the Christian Institutes are by adverts for gay hotels, they cannot do anything about it, especially if the EHRC have told the hotel that they are in the clear. However, John Wadham and the EHRC might possibly bring one against a hotel which says:

Dire Straitz Hotel has been run as a heterosexual hotel for the past 24 years and is one of the most popular and longest established straight hotel in Llangrebub, catering for heterosexual couples, singles, and people who want a heterosexual environment. Situated close by Llangrebub's new heterosexual piazza, Dire Straitz Hotel is a short walk along the promenade from Llangrebub's tea rooms, ball room and chapel. Your hosts Mr and Mrs Jones would like to welcome all guests, old and new, and assure you of clean quality accommodation and service.

Although Mr and Mrs Jones say they welcome all guests, the wording could be interpreted as showing an intention to unlawfully discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation or simply be discriminatory in presentation.

Personally, I'd rather see the Chymorvah hotel and the dozens of gay hotels such as Guyz or Pride Lodge or Chaps open and doing their respective businesses. The more they are profitable, the less likely the proprietors are to wind up on benefits.

Note that the hotels forbore to go round shutting each other down, presumably because both the LGBT operators and the Bulls can count shillings; it's better for both of them to tut at each other but keep taking the money. It's hard to get guests and the best thing to do is to build up a regular clientele to smooth-out the seasonal demand and offer the national chains some competition.

It is guests who should be deciding if there is enough business to support an exclusively gay hotel; not the John Wadham and the EHRC as to whether they can run and advertise such an establishment. But if the EHRC is going to do this, it must do it equally across the economy.

The EHRC has a staff of 80 lawyers; the commission itself has a budget of £70 million. (I'm assuming the Times added up the numbers in the Report and Accounts, but I haven't checked)

When is it going to oblige the Acqua Sauna to open women-only sessions at a time which is suitable for that market i.e. they can't wiggle round it by doing only 4.30am on a Wednesday morning once a month, regardless of whether there is any take-up of the day passes?

Alternatively, scrap the EHRC, save £70 million, and leave Acqua Sauna, the Chymorvah hotel, and Guyz alone to get on with making a living.

Holocaust Memorial 2011

Cold but not bitter, the Holocaust Memorial in the Abbey Garden was quietly organized with the planting of snowdrops. Pearly lanterns against the grey earth.



A few flakes of snow fell but the air was still; they whirled down and vanished. The gardeners, earth-born in gillets and knitted hats, stood looking much like any workmen from the last fifteen hundred years, waiting while the frozen children sang the song they had rehearsed.



The children's reedy voices fluted up thorugh the bare branches, the ringing of their chime bars created an elegant minimalist memorial, bright as silver, fragile as peace.

Marriage a la mode - popcorn

I don't think much of the Christian Institute; it takes unsophisticated people like Peter and Hazelmary Bull and makes meejah capital out of them. Had they read the post Marriage a la Mode - gay and the comments there under, they would have known:

Civil Partnerships are marriage in all but name. In some people's eyes you aren't married but they probably won't accept that you are civilly partnered anyway. The law simply has no traction over that. So What? Nothing follows from this, except if they try to deny you rights to which you are legally entitled, in which case you can take legal action.

It was thought that the argument would come over whether orthodox churches could be compelled to perform gay marriages, but this is unlikely due to primary legislation defining marriage as involving a man and a woman. I also said in the comments that:

I await with a bag of popcorn the clashing arguments of freedom of religious expression and the primacy of civil rights law.

Turns out the the challenge had in fact begun in 2008 in the small Chymorvah Private Hotel in Cornwall and followed the 2006 Equality Act and, crucially, secondary legislation in The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007.

The hoteliers, Mr Peter and Hazelmary Bull do not regard civil partnerships as marriage - because it isn't in law or Scripture - and wish to provide hospitality in accordance with their Christian beliefs. They want unmarried couples in separate rooms. Since 1 May 2007 the law has required people in civil partnerships to be treated the same way as married couples in the provision of goods and services.

(I've linked to the Netlawman version because it is the easier layout to read.)

Note that this is secondary legislation, Statutory Instrument No. 1263 of 2007 . The SI was subject to the affirmative procedure, which is supposed to provide more scrutiny than just a nod if nobody shouts. For a description of the procedure, see page 5 of this briefing.

In practice only a dedicated tracker would be able to keep up with the process. Fortunately for Stonewall, it receives some hefty donations to help it do just that. See page 15 of the Stonewall 2009 Report and Accounts for a list of major donors, including:

Equality and Human Rights Commission £96,904
(this was the body which supported the case)
Greater London Authority £12,000
Scottish Government - Voluntary Action Fund £190,921
Welsh Assembly Government £109,996.
Stonewall's (charity no. 1101255) total income 2009 £3,843,063

Do please click on page 15; only four are picked out for illustration. In comparision, the Christian Institute (charity no.1004774) , who advised the Bulls, received donations and grants totaling £1,620,874 in a similar accounting period, but does not list the donors so it is not possible to see if there is a symmetry of receipts from public bodies. The overview suggests not, that the donations are from private individuals, but without the breakdown it is not possible to say for sure.

The explanatory note to the SI (linked below) insists that a reliable consultation procedure was carried out and that there was widespread public support for the measure, and that it reflects such exemptions as where justified. The SI is algebraic to read, full of As and Bs and IFs, so the explanatory note to the instrument is an important aid to understanding

Explanatory note from the UK legislation database:

7.14 The Regulations will make clear that married persons and civil partners are in materially the same position for the purposes of the regulations. This would remove a possible obstacle to civil partners bringing a discrimination claim on grounds of sexual orientation against a provider of goods and services who denied them access to a benefit or service that was being offered to a married person in a similar situation.

Or as it says in the explanatory notes to the made version:

Regulation 3(4) provides that for the purpose of the provisions defining whether discrimination has taken place, when comparing the treatment of two people, the fact that one is a civil partner and the other is married is not a material difference in the circumstances.

When the Christian Institute approached the senior citizen hoteliers Peter and Hazelmary Bull to help with with the case which had been brought against them by Martyn Hall and his civil partner Steven Preddy it became part of the Institute's continuing campaign to show that Christians face discrimination in the practice of their religion.

Sensible advice would have been to warn Mr and Mrs Bull, that in the Statutory Instrument which came in to force in April 2007 was a clause which required civil partnership to be treated as marriage, that they were very likely to lose because they didn't come within any of the exemptions, and if they were told to pay the costs as well as compensation, they could think of a big number and double it.

Had the Bulls backed down and offered compensation they would have been exposed to only a fraction of the expense and strain, and could probably have spun the lower publicity in to increased bookings. The Christian Institute could have explained the current law to the Bulls and not used them as cause celebres. Obviously a client's wishes must take precedence but it is the lawyer's job, even if working for free, to warn the client when they are on a hiding to nothing under the current regime. Let's hope the Christian Institute are picking up the costs for the Bulls.

Let's have a look at that S.I, courtesy of Netlawman. Here's the relevant point edited to bring out the structure:

(4) For the purposes of paragraphs (1) and (3),
the fact that one of the persons (whether or not B) is a civil partner
while the other is married
shall not be treated as a material difference
in the relevant circumstances.

The legal intention is clear: a civil partnership is not a material difference to marriage for the purposes of justifying different treatment. So don't try it, because it won't work.

One of the remarks made by the Judge Andrew Rutherford at Bristol County Court was that if the claimants, Hall and Preddy, had 'set up' the Bulls or were part of a sting operation, then damages would be curtailed. Strange to note, then, that the on-line booking form for Chymorvah makes the Bull's religious views reasonably clear:

Here at Chymorvah we have few rules, but please note that as Christians we have a deep regard for marriage (being the union of one man to one woman for life to the exclusion of all others).

Therefore, although we extend to all a warm welcome to our home, our double bedded accommodation is not available to unmarried couples – Thank you

Whether the Bulls were prepared to let them have the twin-bedded room, Trigge, is not recorded. Interestingly, this is a change from the wording which was earlier alleged to have been "we prefer to let double accommodation to heterosexual married couples only" says the Daily Mail, which suggests the wording was changed after a letter from Stonewall. One wonders how likely it is that Hall and Preddy were unaware of other legal challenges, or that they didn't read the hotel's website? They maintain they did not see it.

What the name and the wording suggests, however, is that the Bulls thought of themselves as running a home where they allowed people to stay overnight, as opposed to a hotel where they happened to be operators who also owned the building and lived there . They had mis-read the situation. Their freehold makes no difference to the legal position.

There is a very limited exemption under s.6 for someone taking in a close family member or similar in to their homes, but s.4.2(b) makes it clear:

Paragraph (1) applies, in particular, to— ...accommodation in a hotel, boarding house or similar establishment,

John Wadham of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has been crowing that this is a landmark decision. Pish. It is a county court judge reading and correctly applying an SI which contained measures which mean that if push comes to shove, civil law trumps religious protocols in the booking of hotel rooms which are not part of religious organizations, and that goes for whoever is running the business, however small.

In general, the proposition that the secular law (both civil and criminal) should prevail over religious views has wide support. This is not so difficult to understand in the public sphere. Ms Ladele (a previous Christian Institute case) was a registrar and her job was to register civil partnerships, not have an opinion on whether this was morally defensible. Supermarket staff cannot refuse to handle goods on the basis that the items are forbidden in their religion. There are limits however. For example, the law recognizes the right of medics to refuse to take part in an abortion. It recognizes that for reasons of religious belief, pre-stunning before the slaughter of animals may not be enforced even though much secular opinion thinks it should be.

Despite the views of Judge Andrew Rutherford, Mr and Mrs Bull have a great deal of support in the country as it is by no means clear to people with better things to do than grovel around in the pocket-lint of discrimination legislation, why a pair of small business owners should be forced to facilitate sodomy in their own homes against their religion but are prohibited from allowing a paying guest to smoke indoors when they may have no objection to it.

Domesday Ambridge

The Gospel Oak in Winter by Ms Caroline Bone
Words on the funeral of Nigel Pargetter of Lower Loxley

Over at the Archers the words continue to fly over the execution of Nigel Pargetter. Vanessa Whitburn, late of Brookside, claims that the wider audience loved it. She believes she is a far-sighted dramatist bringing cutting-edge realism to an old format.

The commentariat - whom Whitburn believes are unrepresentative of the five million audience as a whole - say they aren't listening and don't want that story line. If they wanted realistic drama, they'd open a book or go to the theatre or perhaps pick a DVD. They are a literate audience, not dependent on Whitburn for their high culture. Also, they've got enough trouble with real grief and 'ishoos' and don't need to feed vampirishly off fictional grief, thank you very much.

They regard Whitburn to be much less technically adept as a dramatist than she thinks herself. They don't believe a farmer who has been stuck in a ditch and nearly died, had a tree he was felling fall on a farm worker killing him, and had his cousin squashed by a tractor, would go up on an icy roof in the middle of the night for a poxy banner. There is another Archer who is stupid enough to do it, but he's bone idle and would have left the banner up there until it was current again. They also plain don't like her, regarding anyone who dismisses an actor by phone after almost thirty years collaboration as demonstrating supremely bad manners and encapsulating everything which is wrong with the Archers, the BBC and indeed, the country.

Whitburn was acting within the law; the Archers actors are not on employee contracts but are freelancers and the recording schedule jigs around their other paying work. Still, it was both callous and cowardly, a personal failing, to do that over the phone when the charming Graham Seed deserved at the very least a visit. As many listeners expect bad news about their own jobs in the coming months, they identified with a man pleading for his character to be spared.

Like the failure of the BBC to realize quickly enough why the Jonathan Ross episode was such a danger to them, Whitburn continues to think this was Seed's fault for not being in her office when she wanted to sack him. How dare the audience complain, who do they think they are, the people who pay her wages? In Whitburn's Ambridge, Seed is only a bloke so he doesn't matter and he hasn't got any special cards such as being black or gay or lefty. He should think himself lucky he got a phone call; he could have found out when he opened the script.

The Archers is Middle England's 15-minute coffee-time treat during the day or perhaps their Sunday soak instead of going to church. They are part of the congregation of Ambridge which was extended by William Smethurst when he edited the show from 1978-1991. It is a very broad congregation indeed which stretches from people who put up wallpaper border strips half-way down the wall in imitation of aristocratic dado rails, to people who inherit good furniture.

Smethurst used his background as a journalist to introduce a feeling of 'all human life is here' in to the story lines, although in fact they were there from the start. Drastic measures had been taken to keep the show on air; the BBC had tried to discontinue it in 1972 in an early showing of spite towards the middle-class audience which had dwindled, despite a 20 year relationship with the village created by Godfrey Baseley in 1950.

Smethurst credited the radio boss Jock Gallagher with defiance at the time, a preparedness to do what would keep the show on the road, although he didn't always think much of the story lines which emerged. He joined as a script writer in 1974 and took over the editor/producer's chair in 1978.

Yes, Smethurst spiced-up but the dish but it was still a recognizable product of English literature in a rural setting. The Aga Saga is a regular best-seller, the product for people who would like a country house at Burnham Market but manage with booking a short break in a holiday cottage or, at minimum, lavender bath salts and a face-pack during the omnibus edition, looking forward to a Sunday lunch done in their new Conran chicken-brick. It's traditional, darling. He positioned it for Middle England and proved there was a regular mass audience for an everyday story of country folk, refining and re-tuning the 1950 classic recipe for the 1980s listener, astutely trading on its own nostalgia.

Smethurst has also been credited with injecting humour in to the story, aligning it with comedies of modern manners.

The approach was typified in Smethurst's 1981 book "Ambridge, An English Village Through The Ages". It was a history as written by local people and a history lecturer - all named characters in the show - and contains an early reference to the Reverend A.S. Pargetter who collected and listed the Borsetshire dialect in the 1850s. His son, Edmund Pargetter, extended the volume in to the better known Borsetshire Dialect for publication by the English Dialect Society in 1869.

"Undoubtedly the most famous work on dialect lexis is Joseph Wright's six-volume English Dialect Dictionary (1898-1905) which remains an essential text for all students of the subject. This pioneering work drew on the collections of the English Dialect Society, set up to gather its data and disbanded in 1896 when it saw its task to having been completed. Decades before Joseph Wright, the English gentleman-scholar Alexander Ellis began to investigate regional pronunciation, no mean feat prior to the invention of the International Phonetic Alphabet and sound recording." Says Clive Upton, professor of modern English language, University of Leeds, substantiating that Smethurst was spot-on with his research, making the fictional Pargetters do what the real Alexander Ellis did.

There are caches of the publications of the English Dialect Society in university libraries. I like to think that at least one of them really is by a Pargetter. Smethurst played a perfect hand of fakes which the English adore, smuggling real history in to fictional accounts.

In 1984 the copy of "Ambridge" which I have here, was presented to Martin Roberts, a pupil at Sandown High School on the Isle of Wight, for winning the Thomas Cup for Physics and Maths. There is no way to know for sure - unless Martin Roberts is out there and able to confirm this - but it is a strange book to give to a teenager unless he was a fan of The Archers and was already a conspirator.

The book is beautifully edited, pitch-perfect for a middlin' audience with a sweet-tooth for accessible history. It presages the current popular history shows such as The Edwardian Farm in collecting the reminisences of Doris and Dan Archer, formalizing the back-story of the village.

In a dizzy display of references, even the backstory has a backstory. The Visit Worcester site milks the connections for all it is worth, as it contains some of the locations Godfrey Baseley had in mind when he wrote the original. Go to the Bull at Inkberrow and complete the circle by looking at Archers memorabilia.

Smethurst kept up the fun with the Archers Official Companion, followed by a cookery book, and then Dan Archer's own memoir. Other spin-off publications fostered audience affection and involvement which helped protect the BBC when serious questions were raised over the BBC's future in the 1980s. Smethurst left the programme in 1991, having been begged to save a TV soap. Vanessa Whitburn took over.

The difference could be summed up as 'pomposity'. Smethurst was not above jazzing up the story, but his game was building a show and hanging on to it, not lecturing the audience. Whitburn was reported by the reputable commentator Gillian Reynolds to have enjoyed working for Smethurst but said "of course the programme was a lot frothier and lighter and less substantial in those days".

Smethurst had a book to sell by 1996 "The Archers: The True Story" and was not impressed by Whitburn's handling of the vehicle. He disapproved of what he called Whitburn's "urbanisation, feminist propaganda and political correctness"

That's the nub of it; Smethurst writes stories you might want to read which build on a tradition of engaging characters and emotions, plausible plotting and properly researched factual backgrounds. Whitburn is writing a story of contemporary issues which claim to be in a rural setting but her agenda is already a period-piece of hectoring social finger-wagging, frozen in the dying days of Spare Rib magazine and Brookside itself, the decline of which Wiki summarizes thus:

"The Gordons were considered miscast and generally unlikeable; furthermore, the abrupt death of Alan in the 2002 siege aftermath, followed shortly after by Debbie dying in a car crash, gave the remaining family a depressive on-screen presence as their children dealt with becoming orphans."

Whitburn's Ratner moment - named for when Gerald Ratner blew up his own company by insulting the intelligence of his customers - came on the Today programme the morning after the 60th Anniversary edition. Two things became startlingly clear; the character was dead, not injured - the cliff hanger had not resolved that - and the real life actor had been prepared to carry on in the role for as long as he was able, so the storyline didn't emerge from him wanting to leave the show. The audience united in rage rather than grief that they had lost the one character they really liked and enjoyed hearing.

Everyone holds their breath for the RAJAR listening numbers, as if hundreds of cogent dramatic analyses from the core audience were not warning enough; this programme has jumped the shark.

Or perhaps it was pushed.

Gate

One autumn the wind blew so hard that it pushed the garden gate, which opens in to the back lane, over its rebate, sticking it fast. We were trapped.

Aieee! Trapped!

I checked the chocolate biscuit supply and reckoned that so long as you didn't mind a walk, we could manage with just the front door and go along the main road.

The back gate was dodgy all winter, a constant menace as to whether, having let us out, it would let us back in.


Eventually, the weather turned and it was possible to take the gate off and repair it. While Mr Raft sawed and sanded and chamfered and drilled and glued and screwed, I made the tea.

Standing with a mug of tea and admiring his exemplary handiwork, I looked at the other end of the garden where the bushes grow.


That gate, the other gate, the secret gate, was working the whole time.

The destruction of Ambridge

There are several places I would cheerfully see blown to kingdom come and they are Albert Square, Weatherfield, Emmerdale, and now the village of Ambridge. Leaving aside the first three - because I don't watch their pox-souled inhabitants tear lumps of each other and pretend they in any way reflect the state of the nation or amount to drama - I was an occasional visitor to Ambridge.

Ambridge had the greatest capacity to reflect real-life events in fictional characters to see how things would play out in real-time, using radio in a way that TV cannot match. Like news, satire, magazines and blogs, Ambridge could anticipate events and react to them, sometimes changing the scripts at short notice if the show was overtaken by reality.

Often criticised - rightly - for crude pro-Labour politicking, the series nevertheless managed to examine serious issues such as what happens when tenant farmers go in to debt, how do conservative congregations feel about lady vicars, coping with dementia, planning applications and other personal things such as teenagers taking up with dopey boyfriends or rivalries over pie-making.

They had to use the dramatic convention that people kept talking to each other long after real-world people would have said "That's it, I'm never speaking to you again" and somebody would probably have strangled Linda Snell by now, but you have to give radio dramatists a break; if they don't have people talking they haven't got a show at all.

When long-time inhabitant Phil Archer died, it was because his actor, Norman Painting, died. Many people felt that they were listening to the end of an era in the fictional funeral because his voice had been a welcome presence in their lives. Painting was lucky; perhaps because he was no political threat, he was allowed to live out his radio life as Phil Archer to the conclusion which many people reach where they die of natural causes after a long, blameless life and are loved by their friends and family. It does happen.

Inconveniently for Vanessa Whitburn, the producer, Painting died in late 2009 and so Phil Archer had to depart four months later in February 2010. Ideally, he should have gone in to deep-freeze and been given a ceremonial cremation on Lakey Hill for the 60th anniversary, and hang the rules about open-air incineration. It would have been a controversial story line because it involves conspiratorial villagers, a conflict of laws and opinion, and a possible prosecution of Jill Archer. The cremation could have been disguised as a New Year's bonfire party with the vicar dithering over whether this was or was not in accordance with Phil's Christian beliefs. A defiant Jill could have been arrested and carted off to Borchester nick, with an unaware-Usha suddenly finding herself defending both Jill and her own husband. "We didn't tell you, Usha, because we didn't want to compromise you. This way, you genuinely had no idea Phil was on the pyre".

Instead, the talentless Vanessa Whitburn decided to bump-off Nigel Pargetter merely by pushing him off the roof. The monumental stupidity of slaughtering one of the handful of people in Ambridge who aren't gargoyles, was laced with malice. He had to die because he was old guard conservative despite his hippie ways, because he was a portrait of a certain kind of Englishman, and it had to be in a pointless way, nothing heroic about it, because in Ambridge it is forbidden to say anything good about a gent. All conservative viewpoints are to be put in the mouths of the most dented and discredited characters, such as Shula and Brian Aldridge.

The audience are not happy. They go to Ambridge to hear Nigel, not to bury him. The loss of yet another male character, especially a fundamentally decent one, is another reason to stay away as Ambridge gradually turns in to Tenko. Besides, we are on the brink of months of real-life misery. Fictional grief is surplus to requirements; there's plenty of real grief to go round.

It isn't the first time Whitburn has fouled-up. The 2006 Ruth Archer extra-marital affair was so hopelessly out of character and such an unwelcome development that the audience switched off. It was even lampooned by the late Humphrey Littleton on "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" as the traditional way of celebrating the 15,000th edition. The writers hastily patched up the episode and put it in the Never Mention This Again box. There are some things the audience is not prepared to hear, even if you managed to write it convincingly.

But then, from the BBC's point of view the killing of Nigel Pargetter it isn't a foul-up; it's what they most enjoy - the symbolic killing of England.

Update: audience reaction

Desktop Meme

Having been tagged by JuliaM I must cheat; I'm travelling in search of England - always - and am camped out on a kitchen table. It looks minimalist and organized, which is a lie. I have therefore included my handbag, which is the back-office. Over the years the bag has got bigger, like my waist. Hmm.

While the rest of the world is wondering about Julian Assange's sex-life and his chances of surviving the fury of half the political world, I just want to know: how does he live out of a suitcase? What is in his wash bag, or does he rely on stocking up on mini-shampoos and disposable razors when someone pays his hotel bill? How many socks and underpants does he carry, what does he use in the way of notebooks and pens and novels - and don't tell me paper is redundant, it obviously isn't, you've only got to look at the meme pictures.

I have stared at the pages of the Rohan catalogue until the images fade. I still can't see how putting packing packs inside suitcases helps, although I have used cheap laundry nets to separate underwear etc, just to stop things tieing themselves in knots when I'm not looking. My favourite part of LOTR is where Galadriel gives the Fellowship of the Ring miraculous travelling cloaks which weigh nothing, wash-up a treat, are warm and waterproof but have superior wicking ability, have protective colouring and roll up to the size of a hanky. I've got a space blanket - the silvered plastic membrane - but it's not the same thing. Looking like a giant oven-ready chicken fillet is going to attract orcs.

I'm not a hiking traveller; I'm the sort of traveller who wears Cuban-heeled shoes and a jaunty hat. My natural habitat is at a tea-table, next to a log fire, looking through the window at the marvellous landscape full of booted fools. I do not approve of stamping all over the landscape, rubbing holes in it. That's my version of conservation and I'm sticking to it.

The leaflet is from Daleside Bungalow, Masham, North Yorkshire. I haven't stayed there - I just scooped up the information. Masham is a town blessed with magical water which is converted in to mysterious beer at the Black Sheep Brewery. There is also the Theakston bewery and some disagreement which we need not go in to. Bygones.

On the corner of Masham market square, huddled next to the church, is the Suncatcher Cafe. In contrast to the frilly tea rooms and restaurants, the Suncatcher is a memory of hippie holidays. The open log fire is hung about with beads, silk bags, masks and modern paintings you may wish to own rather than run screaming from. The coffee and food is good, the music is cool.

Masham distills a working vision of England. It has hardly any national retailers and still has locally run butchers, bakers, greengrocers and general grocery/deli stores. A bigger range of locally-produced goods is available than is normally the case - and it is local rather than just badged products, which are the cuckoos in retailing. They look like local produce but many of them come from the same factory in Leek, Staffordshire. The market square is used for parking when the market is not on; it is paid for by an honesty-box.

It's important not to get carried away with a romantic idea of honest yeomen dancing round a Maypole, tra-la, because mains water, electricity, and emergency services don't happen by magic. They happen because we have put vast energy in to massive engineering projects, then do our best to make that technology invisible. It is far too easy to become confused between the theatre-set and reality. Let the safe treated water stop and we soon see how keen folks really are to go back to the days of a strip-wash in a bowl of tepid pond water and no heat until you've made up the fire.

Having said that, if the world is going to become a difficult place in 2011, there are few places better than Masham to ride it out. Maybe Leyburn or Thirsk, if you want more shops.

I tag The All-Seeing Eye. Happy New Year.

Rock 'n' Stroll

Over in Ishmalia, Mr Smith is musing on the meaning of furniture; its significance beyond the functional which often turns out to be the least of its jobs.

This piece, however, is all about function. It is a rocking shoe box. You keep your gear in it - brushes, polishes, cloth, special magic things for making shoes fit, spare shoe liners - hence no more lost shoe-care frenzy.

Before you go out you step on it, one foot then the other, and give the show a quick once-over. The rocking action immediately demonstrates its superiority over fixed shoe-boxes; it adjusts easily to your stance. It is light but strong. Best not to use it on a highly-polished floor, though, as there is a chance of it skidding away.

The box has the air of a successful woodwork project by somebody - look, it's obviously a male manufacturer, it just is - who wanted to learn how to cut, join and fit wood. It is the next project on from making a simple rocking crib; it has two hinged lids which shut snugly. It is the way it shuts properly, has not warped or split, even after many years of being stepped on, which suggests that it was done with pride. The person wanted to make a really useful thing while learning the craft, and they did.

I don't know who it was made for or what happened to them, but I do know who it was made by because their neat pencil name is still in there. M. Chamberlain.



It's possible "Mike" - that's how I think of him - was a 4th former when he made it, but the number might just be a note to himself for some other purpose, such as assembly order or project number.

Woodwork projects are often given away, usually to mothers, but it is possible M Chamberlain kept his box and used it for his professional footwear. The neatly folded cloths, the sets of shoe laces, one tube of sports white and the parade gloss which were already living in there were huffy when I introduced suede-cleaning blocks, a nu-buck cleaning spray and gel footpads.

Now, after finding it in a charity shop, it is back where it belongs, where it ought to be and where it deserves to be, sitting in front of a mirror so that it can supervise that all-important wardrobe check before facing the paparazzi : Have You Cleaned Your Shoes?

Thank you, M Chamberlain.

Solstice

The solstice will be on Tuesday 21 December at 23:38.

If the sky remains clear it may be possible to see an eclipse of the moon from Britain. Just in case it clouds over, I took the picture on the early hours of the 21st.

"The eclipse runs for three and a half hours, from 0633 GMT to 1001 GMT, although the stage of total eclipse -- when the Moon heads into the "umbra" cast by the Earth -- lasts from 0741 to 0853 GMT."

Normally sounds wash around here; water, planes, distant traffic, trains, the wind tells a tale it has carried for a while. Once I heard it singing in Russian.

Tonight there were no flights, no cars or lorries moving, no sounds from the rails and the wind is holding its breath. The moonlight was so bright everything was casting sharp moon shadows and the silver trees were full of fairytale forms.

It is about minus 12 degrees Celsius and even sound is frozen.

Vote H'uh, What ever is it good for?

FTB has returned to his excellent blog to muse on what has happened to the country since the election and wonders why he has found it so difficult to address urgent matters which need public illumination.


"it might be that I am still in shock that so many people voted for the Labour Party at the General Election in May."

The following observation will not cheer him up.

In the constituency of South East Cambridgeshire the election was unusual in that it wasn't possible to vote Labour at all as the candidate, John Cowan, had the Labour whip withdrawn just before the election. By then the slips had been printed so although his name went forward and was tagged "Labour", he wasn't really.

It might have been more honest to put a black line through the word "Labour" but they don't allow officers to tamper with the voting papers. If he had carried the vote, he would would have been the duly elected.

In practice, in that constituency, Labour fielded an outsider because they were never going to win it anyway. It turned out, however, the candidate was not just an outsider but a liability with whom they did not wish to be associated and about whom they had already been warned.

Asked for quote so close to the election, the Labour party spokesperson said they hoped people would vote Labour. This was despite the fact that they obviously couldn't because there was no Labour candidate on offer.

Still 4,380 citizens either didn't know this or ignored the short statement at the polling station. The results were:

Conservative James Paice 27,629
Liberal Democrat Jonathan Chatfield 21,683
Labour John Cowan 4,380

The numbers would not have swung it for the Lib Dem chaser but if a Labour voter is going to move, it is not going to be all the way to the other end of the political spectrum (not that that is very far these days) but to an intermediate "stop the Tories" point i.e. the Lib Dems. Some of them must have made that move because the Lib Dem vote increased by about 6%, although we cannot know if the vote came from people who had moved from the Conservatives to the Lib Dems either.

The mystery remains: why didn't the Labour vote collapse to about 500 people, in line with the other independent?

Some of it will be down to ignorance and a determination not to read any papers, blogs, listen to the radio or tv, read any election material frantically shoved through the door by the hopeful Lib Dems, or even to bother reading the notice at the polling station, which I'm told was displayed on the desk where the slips were given out.

Perhaps those voters came down determined to register a preference for Labour, despite the fact that our parliamentary system requires you to vote for an individual and exercise your judgment on the basis of what you think of them personally. It is in fact impossible to "hold your nose and vote Anything" because the Anything party does not stand. All you have are individuals and you either like the cut of their jib or you don't.

It is possible that some of those votes were postal and may have been entered before the row broke out, but after all this there is still the ritualistic core vote. They vote Labour because they do and no amount of facts - such as there being no Labour candidate - will shake the belief that it is the right thing to do.

If they are prepared to vote for a non-existent Labour candidate, it is logical to vote for an existing one - even Phil Woolas - as that at least represents an improvement over an imaginary candidate. Arguably.

The "Can't Do" Culture

MPs famously bought goods from the John Lewis list for the same reason the rest of the Waitrose-classes do; they are supposed to make the whole business of buying homewares very simple. You - or we- pay them, they deliver and set up.

Hoping to experience what life is like in the Nomenklatura, I purchased a washing machine and paid the fees accordingly. Could I have got the machine cheaper by going through the warehouses? Yes, and saved at least £84, but the point about John Lewis is they are supposed to make life like their adverts.




The store offered me a delivery 'slot' of 7 hours, somewhere between 7am and 2pm. Fortunately, I don't have anything else to do but wait for deliveries - it's not like I've got a life or anything - and, anyway, the weather is a reasonable excuse for delay.

At just before 12pm - note, five hours in to the delivery 'slot' - they called and so when they arrived the door was open, the old machine had been drained (as far as possible) and disconnected, ready to go. The space was clear and clean, all the little valves were turned off.

The new machine was brought in, unpacked, the hot-fill pipe capped off with a brass screw-cap (it's all cold fill now) and the cold-fill hose offered up to the opening in the side of the sink unit. Due to an anti-flood device on the hose, the hole was approximately 3mm too small and need to be relieved .



"We can't do that, we aren't qualified" said the man. Things went very bad from there on.

It inspires utter contempt when a grown man says he can't file the edge of a hole in chipboard. It's not cabinet making. It's not even woodwork. It doesn't matter that strictly speaking, it's not their job. I could not hold myself out as a man, allegedly the possessor of a gentleman's plumbing, if I were unable to slightly enlarge a hole in a material which is only one-up from cardboard.

I would not expect to seduce women if I could not do even that. Heck, I would not expect to seduce men if I could not do even that. I would expect even the dogs and sheep to run away laughing, spurning my sexual advances when they found out I could not ease a hole in chipboard in a non-visible part of a kitchen.

We aren't talking about 3ml all the way round or making a hole from scratch; we are talking about nibbling at a couple of points on an existing hole so the anti-flood device - roughly the size of large matchbox on the end of the cold-fill hose - goes through.

"We can't do that" repeated the mis-named installer, sticking rigidly to the John Lewis liability line.

Thoroughly bad-tempered words were had with the customer service moppet at John Lewis, who asked if I didn't have somebody who could help me make holes in chipboard? I told her that as I had been waiting for five hours, if they had said they needed a 7.5mm hole, I'd have nibbled it out ready with a junior hacksaw.

We were talking, I repeat, about removing a couple of millimetres of chipboard on the edge of an existing hole. You could probably do it with determination and steak-knife. A century of feminism and 130 years of public education for all, and somehow it strikes an otherwise capable young woman as inconceivable that a mere female could slightly enlarge a hole in chipboard for herself if given due warning of the necessity of access. No, she must perforce throw herself on the mercy of her saw-bearing male relatives.

Miss Customer Service has probably passed all the customer communication courses but still failed to predict that "Haven't you got anyone who can help you?" is a) beside the point and b) tantamount to calling the customer an ugly old bag who can't get a man. This is unlikely to elicit a warm response, especially if true. We aren't here to argue about how well-connected I am to a tribe of obliging hole-enlargers; that is irrelevant. JLP charged a premium for the machine plus an installation fee then, faced with a few millimetres of awkward chipboard with photocopies of wood on top, gave up and ran off for an early lunch, looking for an excuse to not do their job but still get paid.

I then proposed to enlarge the hole myself and wanted to know when they were sending the installers back.
"They've gone to the next job now" said the woman.
"No they haven't. They are having a shufty fag as they've got some spare time now and I can see them over the road".

The young woman then made an offer she obviously thought was supposed to have me grovelling "Well, provided you can do it Right Now, we'll send them back".

I got the saw from the tool box and set about the nibbling. Thirty seconds later the installer appeared at the front door and asked when I'd be finished. I said - and I accept this was inflammatory - "Between 12 and 2" and told him to wait in the van until I called him. For some reason, JLP does not seem to like waiting for the customer, although of course, it's alright if you wait five hours for them. He very well knew it was about a ten minute job. He was scheduled to run a test wash - to make sure nothing was leaking - so all that stuff about having to go immediately was utter bollocks. He was skiving and was narked about being caught out.

"Well, if that's your attitude, I won't try to help you"

At this point I just stared and said "Help?"

Did this man think was doing me a favour, that he had not in fact been paid the agreed price to install a machine but was here as a voluntary washing machine installer. How he was helping? Helping would have been to whip out a Stanley knife such as they use on the van to slit the packaging (not that he thought to bring in a pair of scissors to cut the polythene) and set to relieving the hole that few millimeters, possibly whilst saying 'This is not really my job, but if you don't tell anyone, I won't'.

Or, if feeling very worried about the company line and possible liabilities, then he could have said 'Look, can you cut out that bit quickly? Only I'm not insured. I'll have a sandwich as it is snap time, then do the installation'. A brave man would have done the former, even a lawyer would offered to do the second.

This was waiting for the customer to sort it out and then trying to act like the big man for finally, finally condescending to do one's job, but only under perfect conditions. This is the Can't Do Culture.

I've known fey gay hairdressers to have more guts. 'Pass me the Big Rasp, Julian, the one we normally use for your toenails, I just have to adjust this access port'.

You wouldn't get a Pole talking cobblers about it not being his job; he'd punch a hole with his bare fist and then shrug: 'You want hole bigger, I make hole bigger. In Poland we have hardwood kitchen, not chipboard, not since Soviets.'

You wouldn't get an Afghan tribesman taking nonsense from a kitchen fitment. Admittedly their standard answer is to shoot the hole bigger with a Kalashnikov and then wonder why the cold water is spraying everywhere, but they would hold their manhood cheap if intimidated and defeated by 3mm of compressed sawdust.

Since I refused to give his ego a blow-job and be abjectly grateful for being allowed a few minutes of his valuable time, the installer flounced off. I'm not really sorry; I didn't trust him to do the job at all.



This is the job being done. I nibbed out the unwanted material, cutting it in little triangles. Following the installation instructions I completed the job (the transportation bolts had already been removed but I found I could have managed it as they give you a special spanner) then called a grown-up plumber who stopped by to check I'd done it correctly. It is three connections, four if you count screwing the cap on to the redundant hot water valve. Anyone can plug in the electricity. Screwing in the cold valve is fiddly, but no worse than a bottle-top. Connecting the waste hose is just pushing a hose on to a tapered pipe so that it fits snuggly. A spirit level helps tell if the feet need to be adjusted. You can tell when it is working properly; the clothes get washed and the floor does not flood.

The most difficult part turns out to be the sheer handling of the weight and tomorrow I will get glides to help move the machine in to its housing.