Training | 2010.01.30
Hugh Muir's diary
If you need to know, Francis is your man. But watch out. It won\'t be cheap
• The Tory drive to cut the cost of government will be relentless, we are told. But it may be a little while until they form a government, and in the meantime they\'re going to spend, spend, spend. And no one more so, it would seem, than Francis Maude (pictured) – the former party chairman, now an incorrigible irritant of ministers – who on Wednesday alone was due to receive the answers to no less than 117 written questions. Will the business minister "place in the library a copy of his department\'s Departmental Trade Union Side Officers\' agreement", he had asked. "How many people were employed by (a) local government, (b) central government, (c) public corporations and (d) the civil service in (i) 1996 and (ii) the latest period for which figures are available." How much was spent on private detectives? When will MPs be able to see "a copy of the Communications Electronic Security Group Annual Report for (a) 2007 and (b) 2008". What are "the yearly running costs, excluding value added tax and including service fees and rental costs, of a photocopier in the Cabinet Office". All good stuff, and not all of it obscure, it should be said – but costly enough at £154 a question. That\'s £18,018 for one day\'s worth of curiosity. Democracy is great but it never comes cheap.
• But then life is rarely cheap, and hardly ever without risk. And here we share that thought with whoever posted a YouTube clip rescripted to show Mail editor Paul Dacre as Hitler in his bunker professing unrequited love for Alastair Campbell. These things are traceable, you know, by technos not even half as skilled as those employed by the Chinese. Campbell, who last week went public with the theory that Dacre\'s hatred for him could be fuelled by homoeroticism, enjoyed the spoof enough to have linked to it on his blog. Little wonder, for the lines ascribed to Dacre ("Of course I love him. But he doesn\'t love me back. The big gorgeous bastard") can only inflate the ego. But does it prove the theory? Certainly not.
• It merely proves that appearances can be deceptive, as was the case last month when climate change protesters outside the International Chambers of Commerce in London spotted a metal object dangling from one police officer\'s belt and identified it as a set of thumbcuffs; illegal for use in law enforcement, much admired by torturers. What is that, they asked, pointing at the device with fingers and cameras? Er, it\'s a safety cutter, said a quick-thinking sergeant. "Like those things you use to cut seat belts." Lies, all lies. In fact, the Yard confirms they were indeed thumbcuffs. Turns out the cop had been on a training course on how to get fingers out of the monstrosities. He had no plans to use them, says the Yard. He had simply forgotten to hand them back.
• But then the police have much to think about, not least the ongoing preparations to keep evildoers away from the 2012 Olympics. They are hoping for the best and yet planning for the worst. Like questions from the Tories, this sort of thing doesn\'t come cheap. Entre nous, of course, but plans at this early stage would see thousands of officers deployed from all over the country to three control centres around the capital. And here\'s the best bit, Sarge, they\'re talking giddying amounts of overtime. A policeman\'s lot can be a happy one, after all.
• And so the clock ticks down, and with each day comes proof that it is likely to be a very dirty general election indeed. Click on www.labourparty.org.uk, suggests a reader – and so we do. And there we find not the thoughts of Gordon or the plottings of Charles Clarke, but a nasty interloper site called "Don\'t Vote Labour", which promises "a million and one reasons not to vote for the most authoritarian regime in the western world". The real site can be found at www.labour.org.uk, where the content is at least authentic. We seek to rise above the nihilism, but it\'s hard.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/[...]h-muir-diary-alastair-campbell
