Of motes and beams

Jim Devine, the former Labour M.P., has just been released from jail after serving 4 months of a 16 month sentence for expenses fraud to a feeding frenzy of righteous indignation. Incumbent members are on holiday and generally unavailable for comment. Brazen editorialising has paraded as straight news, spraying cold-filtered opprobrium with gay abandon and no inferable sense of irony.

Now, some might think it reasonable to say, on the basis of what they have learned, seen and heard of the man, that he would not be one’s first choice to be stuck in a lift with for any length of time. That monotone Lanarkshire brogue, despite being perfectly intelligible to anybody who can see their way to leaving a few prejudices at home for a minute is, nevertheless, for dialect connoisseurs and collectors only.

By way of a motif, it might be worth considering something obvious, something that can usefully withstand repetition now and again; Jim Devine was voted into office. In a democracy, this in itself has to carry weight, even if it is dead weight. Chip away at this and you effectively over-rule a plebiscite and a rapidly widening wedge will sense an opportunity.

Is Facebook the new Scientology?

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A taxing question

Norman Lamont, a.k.a. Baron Lamont of Lerwick, a man famous for his inability to pronounce his own name (ask any Lamont, particularly of the Shetland strain - the stress is on the first syllable) has called for a reduction of the maximum income tax rate from 50% to 40% for poor souls struggling on £150K a year.

This is the man whose political career was distinguished only by his far from illustrious tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, during which he oversaw fiscal miracles such as Black Wednesday, when George Soros famously made a billion pounds in one day and Britain’s ignominious exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, events which helped push Britain into recession.