Training | 2009.05.30
Hugh Muir's diary
It\'s the not knowing that\'s the worst of it. It\'s the uncertainty. And it\'s the fear
So the reports say that they\'ve called in the psychiatrists to help MPs battered by the trouser-gate scandal. Laugh if you will, but the more compassionate will reflect that few of us outside the Westminster target zone can really know what it\'s like. Today marks two weeks of drip, drip, drip allegations, and MPs are going to bed in fear of what one calls "the one o\'clock email" from the Daily Telegraph – the first indication that someone is going to be done over in the morning. When 1am passes they sleep soundly, but by noon the fear returns. One poor soul for whom the 1am bell tolled complained publicly that the paper owed his family an apology for stalking them before launching an unfair attack. He had his expense claims revisited and escaped with just a couple of tiny claims in the next day\'s paper. It transpired that he had not been reimbursed for the alleged claim anyway. We could identify him, but we will not for he is now a cowering creature who fears the light and the ever-present threat of the "one o\'clock email". The terror never really goes away.
At least there is release for Michael Martin. The pressure is off. Time to start a new life. Scots Care, the charity for Scots in London, makes clear its willingness to help with a new poster featuring the Speaker and the strapline: "Need training for a new job? Let us help with the expenses." He\'ll be touched. No, really.
He fell short but he wasn\'t the only one. If anything the charge was aiding and abetting. If you really want to know who gave cash-splashing MPs the idea for flipping their homes and pocketing the cash, look no further than the newspaper that did more than most to dignify the practice. "Become a butterfly and flit between homes," it said. "Or in the jargon, switch \'principal private residence\' exemptions between properties. All gains on property are taxable with the exception of the home you live in, which the taxman calls your principal private residence. However, if you own more than one home you can elect which you wish classed as your primary residence, provided there is some evidence that you have actually resided there, albeit shortly." Thus advised the Daily Telegraph in 2007. Richard Reeves of Demos notes: "The piece also urges money-conscious readers: \'Don\'t forget to claim expenses\'." They didn\'t forget.
A happy announcement now. "The Rt Hon Stephen Byers MP, former UK Cabinet Minister for Trade & Industry, has been elected as the new President of GLOBE UK. As GLOBE UK holds the Presidency of GLOBE International Mr Byers has also become President of GLOBE International." He will be closely supported, we see, by Malcolm Bruce MP, chairman of the UK Select Committee for International Development, and Lord Michael Jay, former head of the UK Foreign Office. But we look in vain for any mention of, or thanks to, his predecessor, Elliot Morley: alleged mortgage trouserer and the first in the current farrago to be suspended from the Labour party. Airbrushed from global history. Elliot X
But then it happens in all walks of life. People fall out, fall by the wayside. Poor souls get forgotten. The Specials, a band much loved by us of a certain age, have been wowing the crowds with their revival tour in recent weeks, but they have been without the band\'s founder, Jerry Dammers. The reasons for this are hotly disputed but Horace Panter, the bassist also known as Sir Horace Gentleman, this week told a Coventry University audience that Jerry wanted them all to write him a letter apologising for the way they had treated him over the last 25 years. That was never going to happen. There was the risk that without the founder, the gigs would lack a certain something and, so Horace says, the band were delighted to see Jerry in the crowd at the Brixton show, his identity thinly obscured by National Health-type glasses. He was easy to spot. For a start, he knew all the words.
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