People are missing what is wrong with Sir Thomas Legg’s inquiry into MPs’ expenses.
People are missing what is wrong with Sir Thomas Legg’s inquiry into MPs’ expenses. It is not so much that it is unfairly retrospective: after all, MPs were supposed to decide themselves what was appropriate in the discharge of their parliamentary duties, and so they should not now take refuge in what the Fees Office may have advised them. The problem is rather that, by decreeing a particular level for cleaning, gardening and so on, Sir Thomas is herding sheep and goats together, instead of separating them. People who claimed a bit more than the limit he has now invented may have been unwise, but they are in a different class from the cheats and profiteers. The Legg demands are harsh, in that they force all sorts of MPs who are not wicked to pay back money, but they are also a cover-up. ‘They’re all the same,’ voters say, and that is the view that the Legg method tends to reinforce. But they aren’t all the same: some are definitely good, many are middling, and some shouldn’t have a Legg to stand on.
Patrick Magee, the unsmiling Brighton bomber, appeared on a ‘forgiveness’ platform in the House of Commons this week, 25 years after blowing up much of the Cabinet, killing five people and crippling Norman Tebbit’s wife, Margaret. The simple point about Magee is that he is not repentant. Although he expresses ‘regret’, he always maintains that what he did was ‘legitimate’. He claims the high status of a proper combatant, as if he were a Luftwaffe or Spitfire pilot meeting his opposite number for reconciliation. He is politically motivated, always pushing the Sinn Fein lie: ‘We had no other way.’ Assisted by well-meaning people like the Forgiveness Project, he is allowed to turn the moral tables. It is Lord Tebbit, who refuses to meet him, who is made to look harsh. Magee is all sympathy: ‘Norman Tebbit’s crusade against me is totally understandable — his wife is in a wheelchair.’ This demeans Lord Tebbit’s position by making it merely personal. Of course Lord Tebbit’s pain is greatly sharpened by his wife’s 25 years of suffering, caused by Magee, but the force of his argument is not that it is psychologically ‘understandable’, but that it is morally correct.
The onset of postal strikes reminds me of the one which took place when I was at boarding school in the early 1970s. Then, the loss of the mail meant a virtual seizing up of all business and communication. We felt exhilaratingly cut off. Some private couriers operated, but not at a great volume, and only at great expense. I think a typical ‘pirate’ letter cost 37½ pence, a fabulous sum when a first-class stamp was something like 4p. Today, a post strike is just another slip downwards in the anyway sharp decline in Royal Mail reliability. Most of life is unaffected. But I notice one change in my own habits. Although I use emails for most communication, I try to stick to letters for thanking people. Now I don’t dare, in case they never arrive. When the strikes end, I wonder if I shall bother to revert.
When Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Taleban said that he should have been awarded the Nobel Prize for War. They are wrong — the President has not prosecuted any successful wars so far. But it strikes me that a Nobel Prize for War is a good idea. Since wars do sometimes have to be fought, it is extraordinarily important to fight them well, and to honour those who do so. Once upon a time, this was well understood in Britain. A grateful nation voted huge sums of money to Marlborough, Wellington and even Lord Haig to reward their victories. Nobel should do the equivalent. Moshe Dayan could have got the prize for the Six Day War and Margaret Thatcher for the Falklands. Nor should only generals and political leaders be honoured. Scientists who invent the right weapons and businessmen who make them should get a look-in. Perhaps Tommy Sopwith, or the leaders of the Manhattan Project, or the codebreakers at Bletchley Park should have won the prize. One man certainly deserving of a Nobel Prize for War was Alfred Nobel himself. He invented dynamite.
If the Conservatives win power, they want to run government departments better. Francis Maude, who is planning it all, announced last week that his new departmental boards, chaired by the relevant minister, will have a non-executive contingent drawn from the commercial sector. In extreme cases, they will have the power to dismiss the permanent secretary. It sounds good, but if you think about the pressures on a Cabinet minister, you will see that he cannot be an active chairman. Shouldn’t there be a special class of what you might call senior junior ministers for the task? I am thinking of people like Peter Lilley or David Heathcoat Amory — experienced, tough about waste and incompetence, and not scared for their political futures. They need to be beyond ambition, but not above the battle.
In August, I told TV Licensing that I was going to keep my television but not renew my television licence, unless the BBC sacked Jonathan Ross. Logic would surely dictate that it should either prosecute me or leave me alone. But TV Licensing seems to have come up with a ‘third way’. This week, I rang a number in Bristol which one of its threatening letters had given me, and explained (again) that I would not pay. Please could they stop trying to call without an appointment, and just make up their minds? Oh no, said the polite person, we can’t stop that: it’s computer-generated, and anyway, TV Licensing can’t make appointments. Finally, he referred me to the ‘prosecution office’. I rang it, and said again that I would not pay. ‘That’s your decision if you want,’ I was told. The prosecution office could not take any steps in the matter. How about ringing ‘customer service’? I did so. Another polite man, called Iby, told me that the enforcement officers had to come round in person, otherwise they would have no proof that I was watching TV without a licence. It occurred to me that, since these officers have no power of entry, I could deny them the necessary proof for ever, and so avoid prosecution. Other readers might care to try this at home.
Now that I do not work in an office, I notice, each time I enter one, how incredibly hot it is. If the temperature drops below 70˚F, all the half-naked employees start shivering. If it is really true that we are destroying our planet with CO2 (or even, come to think of it, if it isn’t), couldn’t we live more cheaply and healthily by turning the thermometer down five degrees and putting on jerseys instead?
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