Sorry seems to be the hardest word

The Daily Mail refused to post my comment on its PR ad for Elle MacPherson so I will reproduce it here:

“This article is nothing more than PR damage limitation for Elle MacPherson after her former tax advisor, Mrs Mary Ellen Field, gave evidence at the Levenson Inquiry into media ethics this week.”

Mrs Field described how she lost her job, suffered serious ill health and was bullied into attending Ms MacPherson’s former rehab centre for (non-existent) alcoholism after MacPherson wrongly accused Mrs Field of leaking details of her private life to the press.  These accusations have since been proved to be totally untrue and in fact the leaks were due to Elle MacPherson’s phone being hacked by the tabloid press.  Since Mrs Field lost her job due to these totally false allegations she has not heard a word from her former client and Elle MacPherson refuses to enter into any discussions on the matter of phone hacking in general or Mrs Field in particular.

Instead of doing the rounds of the popular press this week in such a desperate act of self-promotion, Ms MacPherson would be better viewed by those who have been following the Levenson Inquiry by making a public apology to Mary Ellen Field.

“Sorry Mary Ellen.  I was wrong.”   How hard can it be?

Remembrance Sunday

I was fortunate enough to have been born long after World War II ended and, as I have lived most of my life in the UK, have never experienced the horror of any war first hand. Thank God.

I usually watch the very poignant Remembrance Sunday events every year when more than 7,000 ex-servicemen and women march past the Cenotaph, followed by civilians including 60 war widows and charity representatives and it never fails to bring a lump to my throat.

During the two minutes’ silence I reflect how lucky I am that I live in a free country and give silent thanks to those who gave their lives to make that possible.

The last time the Cenotaph was featured prominently on the news was during the student riots last December when Charlie Gilmour, son of the Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour, was pictured swinging from the Union flag on the Cenotaph. He has recently lost his appeal against his 16 months sentence for violent disorder including breaking a window in Oxford Street, theft, attempted arson and throwing a rubbish bin at the Royal car containing Prince Charles and his wife.  The crown court judge had accepted that the incident at the Cenotaph did not form part of the violent disorder, but described it as “outrageous and deeply offensive behaviour”.

Indeed.  What I find most “outrageous and deeply offensive” is that the best defence that 21 year-old Charlie could muster – a Cambridge history student no less – was that he did not realise the Cenotaph is a War Memorial. So that’s OK then.

For sheer pig-ignorance alone, this pampered disrespectful little twonk deserves every minute of his sentence and should probably serve a further six months for the criminal waste of his parents’ money on his highly privileged education.

The Charlies of this country should remember that countless thousands of lives have been lost so that we can enjoy the genuine privilege of living in a democracy where peaceful protests are possible, and this privilege should never be abused.

Perhaps Charlie was watching the Remembrance Sunday coverage on the TV in his jail cell this morning.  If so, I hope he will have learned what the Cenotaph represents, and maybe a bit of humility too.  He will also have seen an interview with ten year-old Lydia Cross who was going to be marching past the Cenotaph with those much older than her.

Lydia lost both her legs due to meningitis when she was two. She has raised over £60,000 for Help The Heroes and is planning to do a sponsored mountain climb to raise more. Maybe Charlie could join her.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15711333

Student Fury as Day of Protest Ends Without Incident ….

….. or anybody noticing …..

Organisers of the student march through central London yesterday expressed bitter disappointment that 2000 demonstrators marched peacefully in a protest against higher tuition fees and “privatisation” in universities without making a blind bit of difference to anybody or anything anywhere apart from police overtime payments.

Media coverage was scarce apart from a brief teatime report of the protest on Sky News sandwiched between the announcement of this year’s “I’m A Celebrity” contestants and an item on Jimmy Savile’s funeral.

Professional “student activist” 81-year-old Clare Solomon was livid. “I’ve been organising student protests and rabble-rousing since I started my degree 50 years ago and I’ve never seen anything like it. Where is everybody? I was expecting at least 50 thousand. Maybe even 50 million. We are the 99% Club after all.”

Solomon and the other organisers blamed threats of police brutality on the poor turnout. “Last year tens of thousands marched. All hell broke loose just like I said it would. People came with rocks and snooker balls to chuck at the Feds. Somebody chucked a fire extinguisher off of the top of Millbank Tower. Loads of windows were smashed and I got on the telly and everything. It was brilliant. This year we have to stick to the agreed route and behave ourselves or else. And there’s loads more police so we can’t break windows or go running around anywhere we want to or break into buildings or anything. Call this a democracy? Britain’s nothing more than a police state. It’s worse than Syria.”

There was a brief flurry of excitement around lunchtime as a small motley group of demonstrators broke away from the agreed route and quickly set up 30 “pop-up” tents at the base of Nelson’s Column. These however were quickly removed by a chasing group of constables within about half an hour.

“We were going to stay here until at least March just like the St Paul’s lot,” said media studies student Dave Miggins as he was led away to a police van “but the Filth lured me out of my tent with a Pot Noodle and a couple of Curly-Wurlys and I couldn’t help myself. Fascist bastards.”

When asked to comment about the latest attempted occupation, St Paul’s Anti-Capitalist Camp spokesperson Sago Soresson said: “Who were those awful copycat proles in Trafalgar Square? We thought of it first. How dare they? They’re just putting more money into the capitalist coffers of Millets. We, at least, have been knitting our own tents.”

Millionaire Guardian columnists Polly Toynbee and George Monbiot came with megaphones to address the protesters at the end of the march to offer their solidarity and to assure everybody that it was only their newspaper (from the tax-dodging Guardian Media Group) that would report the protest in a fair and unbiased fashion. The megaphones weren’t needed however, as there were just three protesters and two dogs left at Moorgate by the time they arrived. All the others had quickly dispersed – as the police had requested – the minute Billy Bragg started singing.

“He was doing my head in,” said one student later on the tube. “That tuneless old git turns up at all the marches. Why? Who is he?”

U2 megastar and charity fund raiding god Bono had been invited to join the march but had to pull out at the last minute because he had misplaced his sunglasses. There was also a diary clash with an accountant in his Dutch tax haven so “No can do – sorry”.

Never mind Jesus – What would YOU do?

A parable of the unwanted guests ….

A few weeks ago, I was woken from my slumbers by a call from my slightly loopy but endearing friend – let’s call her Saffron. She is really REALLY pissed off with her husband because he is a rich capitalist bastard AND IT’S JUST NOT FAIR that he won’t share out any more of his ill-gotten gains with her and her friends just because they haven’t worked as many hours as him. It’s ruining her life and can she come and stay for a couple of days because she hasn’t got anywhere else to go except back at her parent’s holiday home and they aren’t too keen on that idea?

“Er …. OK. But just for a couple of days mind. The family is coming for lunch at the weekend.”

Saffron arrives with a huge rucksack and three friends – who also have huge rucksacks.

“Hope you don’t mind – I’ve brought Tapioca, Sago and Semolina with me. We’re going to hold a protest against rich capitalist bastards like my husband. Here. In your house. Can I borrow your computer? I’m going to publicise it on Facebook. It’s going to go viral.”

“Oh. Errrrm ….. fine. Tea and biscuits?” I say.

Saffron was correct. It did go viral – as in ‘spread like a virus infecting my house’. Over the next few days my house guests multiplied from four, to eight, to 16, to 32, to 64. Then I lost count. Tents were set up in the front garden when the floor space in the living room ran out. They held debates three times a day about how they were going to “Achieve Change in a Truly Democratic Way”. Ideas were proposed and debated at length and all were rejected because all they could ever agree about was that everybody had to agree on any propositions and there was never a 100% consensus on anything.

I was getting through an alarming amount of toilet paper and teabags. My cleaning lady had resigned because the vacuum cleaner was clogged up with the biscuit crumbs and remains of wholemeal hand-knitted tofu sandwiches which were littering the carpet. My friends and family were refusing to visit because they said the stench of BO and marijuana was making them gag.

On day five I found Saffron in the garden strumming “We Shall Overcome” on an out-of-tune ukulele.

“Look Saff, do you think you and your mates could go and do your protesting somewhere else now please? The hall is totally blocked by rucksacks, camping stoves, ponchos, Wellingtons and vegan sandals. It’s a real hazard. If there was a fire, we couldn’t get out.”

“Oh sorry” said Saffron. “We’ll take all our stuff upstairs and dump it in your bedroom. No problem. Oh, could you get some more teabags? We had a debate about it this morning and everybody agreed that we prefer Earl Grey to that Yorkshire crap in your kitchen. And why don’t you have any coffee? Some of us are having to go to Starbucks. Ta.”

I set up a campbed in my shed. One night I was woken up by the sound of somebody fiddling with the garden gate. I stuck my head out of the shed door and saw about 50 of the comrades in the garden.
“Oh, are you leaving?” I asked hopefully.
“No we’re just going home for the night. It’s getting a bit cramped and uncomfortable and Hugo has broken your sofabed. We’ll be back in the morning to carry on with the protesting. Oh, we had a meeting about your biscuits. Everybody agreed that they aren’t that nice. Could you get us some better ones? You’ve run out of toilet roll again too.”

Next morning I came into the kitchen to find a middle-aged woman knitting some yoghurt.
“Hallo. I’m Moonface. I’ve come to protest about public sector pensions.”
“What do you do in the public sector? Nursing? Teaching?”
“Used to be a traffic warden. Then I set up a business selling lunch boxes to City workers. Tofu-filled filo pastry parcels and a carton of mung bean juice go for £10 each. Those rich bastards can afford it. I make a bundle.”
With a sigh I decided to go out for some fresh air and shopping to replenish the teabag, toilet roll and biscuit stocks.

When I opened the front door, a short, dumpy, hatchet-faced woman was coming down the garden path holding a megaphone. “Hallo. I’m Polly Toynbee from the Guardian.”
The multimillionairess, private school fee-paying, three houses-owning, patron(iser) of the “poor and downtrodden” Polly Toynbee who trousers £120,000 a year penning self-contradictory drivel for the tax-dodging Guardian Media Group, plus God know how much more from her book deals and far too frequent TV appearance fees, has come to address the comrades and tell them they have a perfect right to occupy my house, that they have her full support and she so admires what they are doing. Yes, that Polly Toynbee. The very same.
Christ Almighty, this is all I bloody well need.

“Errrrm Polly,” I pleaded. “Would you mind putting them up in one of your houses? You have so much more room than me, and seem to know what they are on about.”

“You want them to leave??” Polly shrilled. “But you invited them here! Good grief, you are just as bad as THE FILTY CAPITALISTS! How very dare you? You own this whole house and have nice stuff! You middle-class hypocrite! You even employ a cleaner for God’s sake!! THAT’S JUST NOT FAIR!!!”

I’d had enough. My ears were starting to bleed, so grabbing Polly’s megaphone I addressed the throng in my living room:

“Listen Comrades. In the first place, my now ex-cleaning lady cleans my house far better than I can and I pay her more than twice the minimum wage. Yes I could sack her and do my own cleaning but what would that achieve? I would have a dirtier house and her kid would have fewer Christmas presents. Would that be fairer?”

“In the second place, I have what I have and own what I own by the expedient of getting up before dawn and working my arse off for decades and never claiming a penny off the state let alone taking the food out of the mouths of single mothers on benefits. And I did all that as a single mother myself.”

“In the third place, you claim to be against war, poverty and injustice. Who isn’t? If you want ‘Change’, however you wish to define it, as we are fortunate enough to live in a democracy, take your heads out of your navels, set up your own party, stand for election with some half-coherent policies and see if anyone will vote for you. Now THAT would be fair.”

“And in the fourth place, if you were to hang the evil capitalist 1% from the lampposts and shut down the banks where will that get you, beyond throwing tens of thousands more ordinary people out of work in this country alone? You claim you are protesting against Corporate Greed and that you are going to stay here protesting until…. until what? Until Corporations stop being Greedy? Well good luck Comrades, because you are going to have a bloody long wait and I am going to die in my shed. Since the dawn of time people have been setting up businesses with the sole aim of making money. Lots of money. As much money as possible. A by-product of which is that they can afford to create jobs which employ people. Lots of people like you and me. If these Evil Greedy Corporations were not interested in making lots and lots of lovely moolah they would set up charity shops instead. Except even charities want to make money and even more money judging from the mountain of begging letters coming through my door thanks to the charities that I do support selling on my details to other charities. Yes, for money. The CEOs of these Evil Greedy Corporations work insane hours at their pointless jobs and go to their early graves never having seen their families – that’s if they have found the time or energy to marry and procreate. It must be a horrible life and they pay themselves vast amounts of money to make up for it. It’s the way the world works and it is not going to change one iota no matter how long you sit mumbling in my living room. You might as well be protesting against cheese!  Deal with it. Put up with it. Shut up. Grow up. And above all PISS OFF OUT OF MY HOUSE!!”

There was a stunned silence interrupted by a knock at the door. A slightly grubby teenage girl wearing dreadlocks and a rucksack pushed past me saying: “Hi. I’m Skylark. I’ve come to join the protest.”
“Are you an anti-capitalist?” I asked weakly.
“What’s one of them? I’ve come to protest against cheese. I bloody hate cheese I do. Cheese is horrible cheese is. Expensive. Disgusting colour. Smells minging. IT’S JUST NOT FAIR. And I’m staying here until cheese changes its expensive evil stinking ways. Got any biscuits?”

There was a sudden rush of blood from my head and I passed out ……

I wake up with a start in my own bed. I make my groggy way downstairs to get a cup of tea. My house is empty, clean and quiet. There are teabags in the cupboard and plenty of milk in the fridge. The phone rings. It’s my cleaning lady reminding me she is coming in tomorrow. Both of my beautiful glossy-haired successful hardworking children have left messages to arrange Sunday lunch. As I sip my tea I shake my head slightly and try to recall a horrible dream. No, it’s gone.

Turning on the TV news there is a scene of a tented village around the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. People wearing plastic Guy Fawkes masks hold up a banner which demands to know: “What would Jesus do?”
Christ only knows. And he’s not telling.