Domestic Bliss

The empathy must have been palpable. Nick Clegg and François Fillon on the ‘phone commiserating with one another. Last Friday Clegg was happy enough with Cameron’s performance in Brussels but by Sunday morning he was criticising his boss. The reason for the change must have been arriving home to find Mrs Clegg brandishing the rolling pin. No doubt she’d had a call from her folks back in Spain asking her what her husband was up to, not helping out the Eurozone. (Incidentally, the reason Clegg was not on the front bench on Monday was because Cameron locked him in the gents just before the session, to keep him quiet.)

Obviously Clegg called Fillon today to have a word about what Baroin had been saying. (Baroin incidentally is employed to do menial tasks for Sarkozy. When Nico stepped down to run for President it was Baroin who (briefly) took over the Interior Ministry, but was soon replaced by bigger fish. He gets jobs when they can’t find anyone else.) Fillon (who no doubt likes his boss as much as Cameron likes Clegg) was able to come to an arrangement with Clegg because Penelope had been giving him an ear-bashing too. Like Maria’s Spanish relatives, Mrs Fillon’s family in Wales had no doubt texted her to complain about Baroin.

Sunday Morning Rant

In my last post I predicted that Cameron’s Eurohaters would no doubt be celebrating his performance in Brussels by buying some Euros and heading for a French ski resort. How prescient!

Aidan Burley the Cameron hugging MP for Cannock has been pictured at Val Thorens glugging down the Eurobooze but maintaining his Eurosceptic credentials by insulting the locals and, in the company of a chum in Nazi uniform, insulting the Germans too. (Also, by extension, all their victims such as Jews, Gays, the disabled and Roma people.) But then that’s the kind of conduct you’d expect. None of these folk seem to think that it’s in Britain’s interest to favour either good behaviour or spending money in the Scottish ski resorts.

Burley works for Justine Greening at the Transport Ministry. The soaraway Daily Mail tells us that Greening has found it necessary to issue several pages of instructions to her civil servants on the use of the English language and draws a number of inaccurate assumptions from this.
Civil servants in all departments receive a note regarding their ministers “preferences” with tedious regularity every time they get a change of masters. The wishes of the minister are often different from their junior ministers in the same department and staff have to bear this in mind when they produce submissions or draft letters for the minister’s approval. Often it relates to spacing, font and the use (or not) of bullet points or annexes. Like many people ministers think that there are hard and fast rules about English and they impose these on others whenever they get the chance. I seem to remember one immigration minister who banned the word “embarkation” in connection with aircraft because, in her opinion, it was clearly a word which related only to ships. The Mail finds it interesting that ministers should need to issue guidance to civil servants. So do I. I still have my copy (printed in 1954) of Sir Ernest Gowers’ The Complete Plain Words. This book was published by HMSO and sets out how the language should be used for official purposes. Greening, we are told, dislikes the use of the word “however” other than at the start of a sentence. Gowers does not agree. I think he knew more about English than she ever will. His only concern is that there appeared to be some convention that “however” was always followed by a comma. He felt that this was unnecessary and that a comma should be used in these circumstances to clarify the meaning of the sentence. A colleague of mine used to say that the strength of English lay in the fact that it is the “Legolanguage”. You can put it together anyway you like in order to get your meaning across. He scorned proscriptive and prescriptive grammarians alike, but readily admitted that he himself had certain personal idiosyncrasies which he clung to, however unreasonable that was.
Changes in civil service recruitment rules some years ago caused the old rule that required applicants for executive grade to have a minimum of 5 O-levels, including maths and English to be swept aside. Not only did this rule prevent those who had obtained their qualifications elsewhere in the EU from becoming UK civil servants but it also excluded those who had migrated to the UK from the Commonwealth, after they had taken their school exams. Of course the law of unintended consequences kicked in and some staff were found to be in need of remedial English courses not only to do their job, but also to enable them to progress on the career ladder.

Departments also signed up to a Plain English policy. All staff were required to attend courses. Although this meant that even the most senior staff were obliged to attend it was clear that those at the top rarely did, or if they attended they just put their heads round the door and were then called away on some pressing matter. Hence whilst everyone else was trying to put out comprehensible communications, the bosses were still churning stuff out in Sir Humphrey speak.

Greening should get her copy of Plain Words of the shelf and draft a letter to Aidan Burley telling him to clear his desk.

The 27 who’ve cut themselves off

Before Australia became PC there was a joke about knowing when the flight from London had arrived because the whining went on after the engines had been switched off. I imagine that there is much the same sort of feeling in Brussels (at the EU) every time the Brits turn up. One commentator yesterday likened Cameron to someone who had taken his ball home before the game started. I liked that analogy because it fitted nicely with his petulant schoolboy behaviour when he realised he been out-manoeuvred by Sarko. He told the meeting that the 26 (now 27) who had agreed to work together to resolve the financial crisis that they couldn’t use EU facilities for their meetings. Yah, boo and ner, nerny, ner,ner! I don’t see why the EU can’t rent out its buildings to suitable functions when they are not needed for Community business. In fact it seems right and proper that they should generate some income in these straitened times even if the charge is a token one.
I suggest that the new group should meet in Strasbourg. This would be a symbolic and practical venue and please the French to bits. There is a full set of EU buildings there used for occasional transhumance/migration of all and sundry in Brussels. Why not hire these? Strasbourg is practical and convenient for EU members and symbolic for the new Franco-German orientation of the organisation. It’s also nicer and much cleaner than Brussels. The real advantage, of course, is that unlike Brussels it has no direct high speed train link with London and those trying to save the European economy can get on with the job safe in the knowledge that Cameron, Clegg and Osborne aren’t going to turn up unannounced and piss in their tent.
By the by. The British press is making much of Sarko not shaking Cameron’s hand. (The French press by contrast led with this weekend’s timetable changes on the railway, an assault on a ticket collector in Marseille and then went to the accession of Croatia before mentioning that the EU was working on the Euro but, unsurprisingly Cameron had stalked out.) Hand shaking and kissing are deeply entrenched in the French psyche. They know instinctively when to shake and when to kiss. One golden rule is that you greet everyone the first time you meet them every day. Not only is it bad manners not to greet someone on the first daily meeting, it is equally bad manners to greet them a second time as this implies you have forgotten the first encounter and is in itself something of a snub. So if Cameron was trying to shake Sarko’s hand he was in breach of the etiquette as they had done so already that day, and Sarko was quite right to ignore him.

That’s telling them, Dave

At least Chamberlain came back with a piece of paper. Macho Dave came back having isolated Europe. It seems that they’ve cut themselves adrift from the British bulwark of solidarity. After years of threatening to use the “veto”, Big Dave pressed the button and fired the damp squib. Nobody really noticed. Instead of scuppering Europe’s plans, giving his mates a referendum and looking clever all that happened was that the vast majority of Europe just found a way round him. For God’s sake somebody take the nuclear deterrent key away from him before he tries that out.

So what powers exactly did he manage to repatriate? The list is empty. How much sympathy has he generated for our cause? Less than none. Jubilant Tory backwoodsmen (just 90 of over 600 MPs) now hold sway and will no doubt tell us that we can trade with the Empire (which they still think exists) and so on.

In the City (where all the problems began) they will (despite their hatred of all things European) be popping the champagne corks and changing their pounds for Euros ahead of their departure in their Ferraris and Porsches for the ski slopes in Meribel.

As far as I can make out nobody in Europe really cares that the UK has again adopted a dog in the manger attitude. They expected little else.

So another success for Cameron and well done Clegg for being so supportive.

 

Now’s your chance, Dave!

By some happy coincidence on the day following Tory backbenchers exhorting Cameron to give the Europeans what-for, the BBC makes the startling discovery of the “Lille Loophole”. This is the situation whereby passengers travelling on Eurostar services from Brussels to London can board using a ticket for Lille and avoid the UKBA checks at the start of the journey which have been so succesful in vastly reducing the numbers of irregular migrants reaching the UK (and generally then becoming unremovable). It should be known that in general the Belgians in Brussels and the French in Lille have been very supportive of UKBA to stop this traffic but there are a few who either can’t be bothered or who just enjoy paying out the Brits.

Anyone listening to Sarkozy’s hour long speech last week (just in time for the BBC 6 O’Clock News but unreported – unlike the similar speech made by Merkel the following morning containing much the same material and widely covered) will recall that as well as announcing this week’s meetings to sort out the European currency crisis with a possible Treaty change, he also said that there was a need to change the Schengen rules. This might be seen as a signal that the UK might bea ble to get a little something in return for supporting changes.

Whilst the UK is not involved in the Eurozone, it is a signatory to Schengen despite opting out of the parts relating to the removal of routine border controls. It can therefore come to that table. All that is really needed is a minor amendment to an Annexe to the agreement which relates to measures which allow high speed trains which cross an internal frontier on their way to and from countries outside Schengen to continue their journeys without stopping at the external frontier for checks to take place. This threatens to become an even greater problem with the advent of Deutsche Bahn and other services such as Channel Metro in the fixed link.

It should not be forgotten that a similar problem existed with Eurostar trains from Paris to London which stopped at Calais. The big difference was that these trains didn’t cross an internal Euro frontier. Our much maligned French friends passed a law which required everyone (yes even French people in their own country) to produce passports or identity cards to UKBA officials if they chose to board those trains. If they didin’t want to do so they could always travel by a different route and tant pis! This created the bizarre situation that some third country nationals were refused permission to travel to Calais by British officials because they had no visa for the UK. There are no longer any trains from Paris that stop at Calais as it was a commercially unviable service.

So, it seems Dave has the opportunity on Friday to pacify the baying backbenchers and achive something without bringing the European (including British) economy to its knees. Support the rescue package in return for British officials being allowed to examine passengers on through trains and if necessary refuse to let them travel. I wonder if Dave is aware of this negotiating ploy?

Cool Hand Luke

Our first snowfall today. When things brightened up we set off for the supermarket. But what’s that I hear drifiting on the breeze? Is it the blues? No, more likely it’s a work-song. Up on the moor road we come across the chain gang. Well, this being UK there’s no chain but there is a gang of orange-clad offenders purging their Community Service Orders. What better job than shifting the snow (what lttle there is) from a path that nobody uses and which will clear by itself in an hour once the sun gets to work. Not for these guys the mirror sunglasses of the shotgun toting deputy from the deep south watching their every move but a shivering supervisor from the Probation Service in the frozen north wondering why he ever chose a career in social work and the public sector.

Credit where it’s due

A number of people, including Peter Preston in the Observer, wonder why the predicted chaos at UK ports and airports didn’t come to pass during last week’s public sector strike. Surprisingly Daisy May and Cameron have nothing to say on the matter. Why not? Well it’s simple. It was no last minute plan to have hundreds of police officers trained to operate the recently controversial computer equipment. It was no accident that a list of similarly trained civil servants existed. (True, none were competent in counter forgery and none will have had any knowledge of the immigration rules so many people not qualified to enter the country will have got in.) It was no accident and the plan had been tried out a few times over the last 18 months when some ports staff were engaged in a minor dispute with their managers. So who was the far-sighted person responsible for ensuring the security of the country’s borders and saving the Home Secretary’s skin? Brodie Clark, of course. He’ll get no thanks.

Counter Intelligence

Another of Daisy May’s mistakes was trying to deport Katia Zatuliveter. The real villain of the piece (and security risk) was of course Michael Hancock but since he is a government MP she has to stick with him. (I noticed the other day that the Speaker repeatedly failed to notice Hancock when he kept trying to get called during a debate. Very wise.) Hancock has great enthusiasm for defence matters, trips to Russia and an apparent penchant for women. He appears to use his position as an MP to exploit gullible or impressionable women. (Like DSK’s policy of trying it on with every woman he meets on the basis that one in ten will bite, Hancock seems to go for those who are easily impressed.)

Obviously the Security Service spotted Hancock’s weakness and decided to do something about it. Their Special Branch friends started having words with Zatuliveter and asked her to keep an eye on Hancock. She declined knowing that, particularly for a Russian, getting involved with foreign security people isn’t a good idea and probably because she felt a laudable sense of loyalty to her employer. The spooks then start to lean on her. She needs Home Office permission to stay in the UK. They can make it difficult. She still refuses and, rather than be shown to be paper tigers, they concoct a story that she is the security risk and wind up the Home Office to deport her.

Fortunately the people at SIAC are not as easily deceived as the Home Secretary.

Police Intelligence

In town today for the Public Sector day of action. Leeds schools are closed. This does not stop the Police truancy patrol van from being out on City Square. Waste of resources.

Bloody Google

A full page advert on the back of my Guardian. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased that someone is willing to place advertising in the Guardian. I wish more businesses would do it. I also wish more shops would sell the paper. But, as usual, I digress.

“Did you really mean used carps?” The ad than goes on to tell us how wonderful their search engine is in ignoring what you’re searching for and taking you where it thinks you want to go. Recently, about the time of the presidential election there, I was looking up something on Kyrghizstan. Would Google let me? No! It was adamant that I really wanted Kurdistan. In the end the only way to get any sense out of the machine was to type the request in Russian.

So Google, mind your own business. If people want to find out about used carps (and there will be somebody out there who is really interested in them) just let them get on with it. People who want used cars will just have to take more care.