When I took the plunge to become a full time writer back in the summer of 1997, I was guided by a friend in the media industry to become a client of a newly-formed London literary agency. At that point I only had one book in print, but although it was with a small West Country publisher, it had done reasonably well. Being fascinated by modern history, I decided that this would be my chosen non-fiction genre and my new agent found a small Shropshire publisher, Airlife, for my first major work, a World War 1 Naval biography, Honoured By Strangers. The book gathered a clutch of good reviews, and led on to a more adventurous project, The Long Patrol: The British In Germany Since 1945,  with an up and coming publisher, Mainstream, in Edinburgh. One good review - on BBC Radio, then a wall of silence. The publishing possibilities looked brighter when I was commissioned to write A Brief History of 1917, Russia's Year of Revolution for Constable & Robinson in London. The advance was £5,000, most of which I spent in air fares on field trips to Russia  and interpreter's fees. None of the three aforementioned books have earned me a penny, and Airlife went bust, Mainstream remain silent, and Constable tell me that the book needs to sell at least 10,000 before I've paid back the advance. There have been other works since, with scant success. I began to suspect that my agent felt that every new idea I came up with confirmed the suspicion that I was not going to earn either of us any real money. After writing 9 books in 10 years, the lack of any real financial reward has at least proved to me that writing history, unless one has a sparkling agency and publisher relationship, is simply a waste of time. I parted company with my agent in 2006 - I think he was relieved to get my 'resignation'.

As a freelance 'jobbing writer' I'm fortunate to have been able to make a living in many other firleds of writing - in local government PR work, commercial copywriting and the music industry. This has kept the wolf from the door, but plotting, planning and constructing books remained my real purpose in life, and I made the decision in 2007 that I would finally try my hand at fiction. I applied for an Arts Council Literature Grant to write my first novel, The Scrap Run, and to my surprise, I got one. Since completing The Scrap Run in 2008 I've completed another novel, Cartouche.

However, no matter how one presents a finished MSS to a publisher, if it arrives in London un-agented and un-solicited, then you may as well bring it up on screen, 'select all' and hit the 'delete' key. After a fruitless mission trying to elicit interest from a new agency, and an equally empty experience trying to stir interest in my two new manuscripts with publishers, I now realise that after all the effort of the past 12 years, all the hopes and pointless dreaming, that I'm stuck with a computer full of work and ideas which have nowhere to go.  To see how my new work might have looked, I decided to 'go it alone' and produce both books through Print On Demand. Here's the details, of you're interested.... 

Beyond the Seven Seas,

there’s another voyage…

Successful, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Mac Anderson’s years of wheeling and dealing between Los Angeles and London have taken a toll on his personality. Although a hard-working writer with staunch working class roots, an ostensibly happy marriage with his wife Helen, a devout Buddhist, and two grown-up children, Mac has his dark, secret side as a hard-drinking, chain-smoking adulterer.

When Helen dies in a horrendous car crash, Mac suddenly realises how much he has lost. He suffers castigation by his children who reveal what they know of his wayward, secret life.

Overcome with guilt and recrimination, he accepts an offer from a bizarre shipping magnate, Thomas Lovelock, of a three-month sabbatical, a journey across the South Pacific on the final voyage of an old tramp merchant ship bound for the scrap yards of India. Yet there is more to this vessel, her strange crew and odd captain than he could ever imagine. Challenged by the lusty temptations of two female passengers who join en route, to reach his destination Mac will need all the moral strength and self-discipline he can muster…

THE SCRAP RUN 375 PP 177,000 WORDS.

Some things are best left buried…

When archaeologist Dr. Rosie Portland unearths a strange granite casket on a building site in a North Yorkshire town, the mysterious discovery opens up a bizarre, epic story which begins in 2,500 BC moving through the centuries to Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt in 1798.

Together with international celebrity TV archaeologist Professor Jenson Grant and a team from York University, pursued by a sinister cult of fanatics dedicated to restoring the old gods of Egypt, Rosie leaves her peaceful life in Yorkshire to embark upon a disturbing expedition in the Egyptian desert which aims to unearth the burial place of the Pharaoh Khufu’s terrifying high pirest and magician, the mythical Nomti Bennaim.

What lies ahead for Rosie is an adventure encompassing romance, terror, tragedy and death.

CARTOUCHE: 348 PP 141,000 words

So - is this a foray into the most despised, stinking corner of the literary arena - vanity publishing? I suppose it would be if I'd not written professionally for the past decade+. That said, it does make me feel quite sick to think of the time and effort involved just to end up with a few printed copies of books one would love readers to have, yet which will never darken a commissioning editor's desk. If you're going to write for a living, be warned.
We're not as clever or talented as we'd like to think.

Though The Frost Was Cruel

We could never quite work it out, my brother and I. Was it ‘Good King Wenceslas looked out’ or was it ‘Good King Wenceslas last looked out’? Looking back, I now realise it didn’t matter. Those tunes, those carols, they filled the dark, sharp winter air with a promise of joy. Even ‘We three Kings of Orien-tarr’ followed by ‘two in a bus and one in a car’ could never interfere with the promise of Christmas day. We knew it was coming, and even if it proved to be an anti-climax, then the long days of December anticipation seemed worth it.

    But on Christmas Eve, 1957, our family life had struggled to rise even a few degrees from the depth of poverty we’d felt since 1954. Our ‘house’, if one could call it such, Elm Bank, was really a trio of converted sheds, the size of three suburban garages, cobbled together to form a timber dwelling. It stood at the end of a long, cinder-topped un-adopted road. In the village of Hedon to the east of Hull, we were the last abode on this hotch-potch collection of similar wrecks known as Bond’s Estate, the domiciles of those County Court judgment unfortunates who could neither afford to buy a home or had somehow dropped off the council housing list. We were the rural poor, neither agricultural or urban; just working people who had been forced to live in the last place available before begging on the street. It was one step above living in a caravan, yet caravans were usually better built than Elm Bank. Only one room, the living room, (shed one) was insulated against the elements by a lining of plasterboard and cheap wallpaper. It was heated by a rusting cast iron wood-burning stove. The bedrooms, (sheds two and three) still had the plain slatted timber of the agricultural prefabrications which they were – leaving nothing but just under a half inch of creosote-soaked pine between us and the vicious East Yorkshire winter. Behind the house stood a bank of tall poplar trees, and beyond them a meadow, at the end of which ran the Hull to Withernsea railway line. The bedroom occupied by myself and my two brothers, (shed three) was the nearest to the trees. At night, when the wind blew, the poplars creaked and moaned, their rustling leaves filtering the sinister moonlight through the cheap, rippled glass in the small, rickety widow frame. We knew the train timetable so well we hardly ever needed to look at a clock. At 9.30 pm the last locomotive towing two almost empty carriages would rumble and chuff across the bottom of the meadow on its way to the ersatz charm of Withernsea, a seaside town which really was the last resort of any holidaymaker.

    We were kept warm not only by several blankets, but with a counterpane on each bed courtesy of the Army and Navy Stores – three hefty ex-British Railways shunter’s greatcoats, still equipped with their resplendent silver buttons. On those dark, merciless mornings of extreme winter coldness when we were shaken from our beds to get ready for basins of porridge and school, those railwaymen’s greatcoats would be stiff with a sheen of ice formed from the condensation which had risen from the slumbering bodies of three small boys. I was the oldest. In December 1957 I had reached the mature ripeness of thirteen, and on Christmas Eve, I was about to stand on the first steps at the portal of manhood.

“We can’t have another Christmas dinner like the last one!” said Mam, shaking her head. Dad poked some more timber into the stove and puffed on his roll-up.

“And we won’t, because I’ve got something sorted,” he said.

    I remembered the previous Christmas. Another railway-related ‘home’ – two converted goods wagons perched on the cliffs of Withernsea’s pretentious sister resort, further up the coast, Hornsea. Christmas Day 1956 saw our mother bed-ridden with polio, Dad out of work. Our dinner then was Irish stew.Yet Christmas Eve at Elm Bank in 1957 seemed to possess an air of promise. Dad, a skilled joiner, was in work. I had found a new weekly delight – the New Musical Express. Rock and Roll had arrived, and we even had a television set. So, if it wasn’t to be Irish Stew again (and even that was a Yuletide step down from the rabbit pie we had in 1954), what did Dad’s cryptic proclamation mean? There was no such thing as turkey among the lumpen proletariat back then. Chicken was an annual luxury, and we even had a chicken coup, yet we’d killed so many of the poor devils for food that year that only three egg-laying hens and an indomitable, evil cockerel survived. Chicken was off.

    As the sharp, bitter darkness fell over the trees that Christmas Eve, spreading its icy fingers of hoarfrost across the surrounding scrubland, the bright moon arrived and the frozen, leaf-like filigree of frost crept across the window panes. My two younger brothers had been sent to bed, excited by thoughts of Father Christmas’s imminent nocturnal visit. Yet for some reason, I was allowed to stay up. Was it because I was now some kind of ‘second man’ in the house? Did thirteen now separate me from my receding childhood? I finished my Musical Express and watched some lame variety show on the TV. Then it happened. Dad switched the set off and, leaning in towards me in a conspiratorial fashion, filled me with a sense of horror as he outlined a mission he had obviously been planning for some time.

    “Right, son. Christmas Eve. I’ve just been outside and lowered the saddle on my bike. I’ve checked the dynamo and the lights are working.” He produced a piece of paper which bore an address scrawled in thick joiner’s pencil.

    “I want you to bike to Uncle Sid’s on the Longhill Estate. That’s the address. He’s got something for us for our Christmas dinner.”

He handed me two pound notes.

    “Give him this money, and tell him Stan wishes him a merry Christmas. Ride straight there and straight back, and don’t stop for anybody. Right – now tell me what you’ve got to do?” I repeated the instructions. He looked at the clock.

    “It’ll take you about three quarters of an hour to get there, and the same to get back. It’s quarter past nine now, so you ought to get back here by half past eleven.”

    “And don’t forget to put your scarf on,” said Mam, “and your gloves, and your balaclava.” I hated that balaclava, but it was an arctic night, and ninety minutes of cycling lay ahead of me, a quite unexpected and highly dubious pleasure.

    It seemed odd, pedalling for all I was worth along the long, straight run of the road between the village of Hedon and the twinkling lights of the oil refinery at Saltend. Odd because I was actually enjoying this. Dad was an ex- Army sergeant, an Indian Army regular who had served in the Punjab for 18 years. For him to give me this important mission filled me with pride. What lay at the core of it was still a mystery, but as I slipped along through the crisp, cutting Christmas moonlight a new sense of purpose pushed my aching, cold little knees into a blur.

    It took me ten minutes of pedalling along past windows filled with shimmering Christmas trees on the Longhill Estate to find Uncle Sid’s council house. I couldn’t help wondering what it must be like in those solid brick homes; proper houses with proper rooms, tiled roofs, ceilings, fireplaces, boilers with immersion heaters – perhaps they even had baths. What must Christmas be like in these places? Maybe it was luxurious. Yet I put it from my mind. I parked the bike and with wobbly legs ambled to the back door and knocked. Sid, a docker, was a wiry little man. Clad in a grubby vest and a pair of shiny gabardine trousers held up with string, he puffed on his briar pipe and eyed me up and down.

    “Aha! It’s lil’Roy, Stan’s lad, eh?”

I nodded.

    “Has he given you the money?”

I handed him the two pounds. I was very cold and I had hoped he might invite me in for a quick warm, but he simply instructed me to stand there by the door as he disappeared into the brick outhouse at the side of the tiny garden. I then heard a strange noise. A furious quacking sound, a fluttering, followed by a gargled squawk. This was repeated twice. Then, through the moonlight Sid appeared holding two fine, and very dead, ducks by their broken necks. He tied them together with a piece of string, walked over to the bike and slung them over the handlebars.

    “Dad said Merry Christmas,” I said.

    “Tell him the same to him,” replied Sid, “now get on that bike and ride like buggery all the way home. Tell your may about two and a half hours at gas mark 6. She’ll love them birds.”

    This was all going remarkably well. Within half an hour the lights of the refinery came into view again. The road was now a sheet of ice and every few yards I could feel the bike slipping slightly, yet I kept my balance and ploughed on. Soon, the village of Hedon appeared, its frosted roofs a blue-white in the moonlight, a living Christmas card. I leaned forward and felt the ducks. They were now frozen solid, the cold of their dead flesh penetrating through my gloves. I passed the closed off-licence, past the ladies’ hairdresser’s shop and the silent motor garage. The road was empty. No traffic. No cars. No pedestrians. Just a freezing, moonlit boy on an over-sized bicycle. Ahead stood the lofty façade of Saint Augustine’s Church. Its tall, stained glass windows emitted pale golden light and as I drew closer, my breath shrouding my freezing face with a pale white cloud of bitter vapour, I could hear the choir singing. Of course, I thought – this must be for the Midnight Mass. It all seemed to fit together – this new sense of positivity, the ducks, my mission, and, as a bonus, those silvery voices were singing my mother’s favourite carol. Then it happened.

    The figure of the policeman seemed to come from nowhere. Like some sinister phantom from a Victorian penny dreadful, he stepped into the road a few yards ahead. He was wearing a heavy cape, and the beam from his lamp hit me in the eyes, temporarily dazzling me. I could see him only in silhouette as I drew closer. His hand was held up, open palm signalling me to stop. I gripped the brakes and drew to a skidding halt in the icy gutter. The sound of his hob-nailed boots, a comfort to those in the darkened, sleeping homes around us, was ominous to me. Yet that crunch along the tarmac was punctuated by the faint, angelic rise and fall of the Saint Augustine’s choir.

‘Silent Night, Holy Night….’

    “Now then,” the voice was a deep, gravelly and confident tenor, “and where d’you think you’re off to my lad at this hour?”

    ‘All is calm, all is bright…’

 My heart was pounding.

“Er…I…I’m going home. I live up there – on the Bond’s Estate.”

“Mmm. Bond’s Estate, eh? All the ruffians live there. Are you a ruffian?”

I wasn’t quite sure what a ‘ruffian’ was, but I didn’t think I fitted the bill.

“No. I go to school.”

He shone the torch on the ducks.

‘Round yon Virgin Mother and Child

Holy Infant so tender and mild’

    “And where did you get these beauties from then, son?”

I shivered.

    “My Uncle Sid.”

    “And what does he do for a living?”

    ‘Sleep in heavenly peace’

    “He’s…he’s…he’s a butcher. These ducks are for me Mam. For Christmas.”

He lowered the beam of the torch. His vapourised breath mingled with mine and was sliced through by the moonlight as he leaned towards me. He had a big, round face with sharp, dark eyes, and sported a thick, well-groomed moustache. Our eyes seemed locked in an inseperable gaze; his one of inquisition, mine one of terror.

    ‘Sleep in heavenly peace’

    He fingered the ducks, weighed them in his huge hands, all the while staring at me. The choir seemed to grow louder, and I thought even then, in the presence of this strong arm of the law, that no matter what may happen, there was still something sadly beautiful in this sorry little tableau, something tragically Dickensian; a young boy, a policeman, a bicycle, two frozen ducks, an almost midnight, empty street and a church choir. A whole verse rang through the chill air as he stood there, pondering.

‘Silent night, holy night!

Shepherds quake at the sight

Glories stream from heaven afar

Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!’

    I then saw something remarkable. His stern, inquiring visage appeared to melt into something more human. The eyes seemed softer. Then I realised that, like me, he too was listening to the music. He breathed in deeply, and to my utter amazement, a tear rolled down his cheek and vanished into the thick undergrowth of his moustache. One of those strong hands reached towards me and patted me on the shoulder.

    “Aye….well. Alright son. You get yourself home and get warm. Off you go. Oh, and before I forget…”

I was about to pedal off.

    “What?”

    “Have a Merry Christmas.”

As I rode away with all the speed I could muster, the faint tones of the choir subsided into the silvery night behind me.

‘Christ, the Saviour is born

Christ, the Saviour is born’

    My arrival in the warmth of Elm Bank’s living room was a triumph, although Dad was concerned.

    “Where the bloody hell have y’been, lad?”

I told him about the policeman.

    “Christ. Y’didn’t give him your address, did you?”

    “No. But he wished me merry Christmas.”

That night I entered something I thought was the first stage of manhood. Dad produced a bottle of that favourite of all Hull’s trawlermen, Red Duster Rum. He poured two small glasses. I was staggered when he told me to 
    ‘”Knock it back, lad – you’ve earned it!”

    We sat around the spluttering stove plucking the ducks, ankle deep in feathers until the clock struck one. On some American Forces radio station they were playing Good King Wenceslas. I shall always remember that line….

“Though the frost was cruel…” Who was he? Police Constable Wenceslas? I’ll never know.

    As I got ready for bed in the ice-bound bedroom, Dad’s silhouette appeared in the doorway.

“Er…good job done, lad. Just do us a favour, though. When you go to East Park next time with your mates, stay away from the pond. There’ll be a few ducks short this year….”

THE END.

How remarkable  is the way the sands of politics in one's life shift and change across the decades. I was once a committed Labour voter, even a member of the party for a brief spell. When we look back to that glorious night of retribution in the Spring of 1997 when almost two decades of Thatcherite madness seemed about to be overturned, we could never have  imagined that the man who greeted that May morning with the words 'A new day has broken, has it not?' could have turned out to ecompass all the shark-like nastiness and contemptible faculty for double dealing and lying as his market-driven predecessors. Now we have a parliament which only needs 'the People' at election times; it pays no heed to our puny voice, and only obeys its leadership. New Labour is all about New Control. Old lefties like me used to find voices of agreement with our worries in media such as The Guardian. Yet today, even those once considered to the right of Ghenghis Khan are slowly beginning to think that enough is enough. So, it is with much surprise that I read the following piece by Trevor Kavanagh - from, of all places, that comic cuts of the masses, THE SUN! It says it all - read it and be afraid.


We are a police state here & now

By TREVOR KAVANAGH

Published: 01 Dec 2008

I USED to think ID cards were a good thing. Along with CCTV cameras and DNA databanks. Even, at a pinch, 90-day detention.

What law-abiding citizen could object to these new weapons against terrorists, rapists and murderers? Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

Not any more.

Not after the death of innocent Jean Charles de Menezes or the pointless shooting of drunken barrister Mark Saunders by two police marksmen.

Not after the inexcusable bugging, strip-searching and futile £1million vendetta by police against journalist Sally Murrer for revealing officers had lost the keys to the local nick – a case which was rightly dismissed last week.

And certainly not after the Stasi-style raid by anti-terror police on an MP I know to be above reproach.

Damian Green’s “crime” was to make Home Secretary Jacqui Smith look even more foolish than she is by exposing the chaos in her department over illegal immigration – surely a matter of national interest.

If Damian Green can be banged up for nine hours for telling the truth, what hope for you and me?

Indeed, if Westminster is not a sanctuary for an elected MP, what hope for any of us?

Parliament may at times be a disreputable bear pit, but it is the core of our democracy for which many fought and died. It is unforgivable for Labour Speaker Michael Martin to abdicate his role as guardian of those privileges and wave the cops in.

His partisan surrender symbolises the way blinkered, insensitive authority now tramples over the rights of people it is supposed to protect.

Arrested ... Damian Green was locked up for telling the truth

Police chiefs are a law unto themselves. And they are out of control.

The Government’s kneejerk abuse of anti-terror laws as a political weapon is increasingly sinister.

Pygmies

It uses them on any pretext – even freezing the economy of friendly Iceland recently when its banks went bust.

Faceless town hall officials use counter-terrorism as a pretext for spying on our garbage bins and school runs.

Soon, unelected snoopers will be able to pry into our mobile calls, text messages and emails.

These are the alarming consequences of an authoritarian regime that sees the state as paramount and the people as pygmies.

Labour’s Stalinist attitude to dissent became shockingly apparent when they manhandled an 82-year-old heckler out of their 2005 conference for daring to shout “nonsense” at Jack Straw. This bullying has seeped into a bureaucracy that purports to represent the human face of the welfare state while presiding over the torture and tragic death of Baby P.

Public sector managers see their first duty as covering each other’s backs while paying lip service to hospital patients, school pupils, crime victims and children at risk.

And the only response from the likes of Haringey children’s welfare supremo Sharon Shoesmith and sulky Jacqui Smith is a glare with resentment – as if THEY are the victims.

In an ill-judged outburst yesterday, the Home Secretary disgracefully smeared Damian Green by hinting there was more to the terror raid than we knew. If so, we must be shown the evidence.

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Labour likes to portray itself as the caring party – in contrast to the “nasty” Tories.

But imagine if the events of recent weeks had happened after 12 years of Tory rule.

There would be screams of “fascism”, violent protests and street marches by civil libertarians.

What we are seeing today is the arrogance of a buck-passing, secretive political class who see criticism as tantamount to treason.

That’s how the Home Secretary justifies her department’s anti-terror squad rummaging through the love letters of an innocent man whose “crime” was to expose her ministerial incompetence.

This raid, seen initially by gleeful Labour as an embarrassment for the Tories, has blown up in their faces.

Now it threatens to overshadow the Queen’s Speech to Parliament on Wednesday and could signal the end for Speaker Martin.

Gordon Brown should apologise quickly – before voters decide he is a ruthless control freak willing to accept any abuse of power to harm his opponents and stay in office.

· AS the nation slides into debt and depression, cash-strapped voters are beginning to ask if we can afford the bloated bill for the 2012 Games.

Others say it will be a spectacular way to celebrate the end of the slump.

But will the recession be over by then, as Gordon Brown promises?

Olympics minister Tessa Jowell seems to have her doubts.

She has taken the career-threatening step of asking the PM to promise the new 45p top-rate tax hike is the last. Fat chance.

The comic Frank Skinner, writing in the Times a few weeks ago, tells the self-satisfied yarn of meeting his bank manager to assess his monetary gains from comedy. Delighted to do so, the banker told Skinner that there was enough money in his account to preclude him ever having to work again and that even if he never did another gig he could live comfortably on his accrued earnings. Skinner’s thoughts on this golden revelation (why he had to visit the bank rather than examine his bank statements is a puzzle) were that all the gigs in dubious venues, the years spent travelling up and down the country, his ‘struggles’ to make it – it had all ‘paid off’. Fair enough. But underlying the amassing of a fortune is a groundswell of unavoidable smugness. When entertainers reach even ‘C’ list celebrity status, the reality of their former existence fades into insignificance. They feel protected by the fortress of their fame. We mere mortal millions, the punters who bought the tickets and put the smiles on their bank manager’s faces, are relegated to the level of a vast army of subservient, adoring fans. Our initial duty – to laugh at our hero’s jokes – is expanded to include worship and a kind of marketplace fealty. Buy the book. Buy the DVD. Don’t forget to tune in to Graham Norton or Richard and Judy because, hey, you lot – I’m on the TV and I’ve got something new to sell. Help me to stay rich.

Skinner’s erstwhile partner in comedy, David Baddiel, (we needn’t mention Rob Newman, his other talented partner – he seems to have managed to keep his ego tethered to reality) is a different example. Highly qualified academically, Baddiel has put comedy on the back burner to bludgeon his way into the ranks of the literati. He also has a column in the Times. A friend of mine, who plays in a band in Manchester, tells of a club gig where they were to open for Baddiel, who was giving a reading from one of his works. The band members, all fans of Baddiel’s comedy, were keen to meet him backstage and perhaps have a chat. No chance. He refused to share a dressing room with them, and remained snobbishly aloof throughout the whole event. Rich, clever and utterly arrogant. That was the hapless musicians’ abiding memory of the Baddiel experience.

   So, money can’t buy you love. And with the current Brand/Ross debacle, it appears that money and love are light years apart. Jonathan Ross, despite his narcissism, his obsession with how people look and his propensity for heartless, insulting behaviour, is never the less a very funny man. He’s sharp, and on occasions, such as with his film criticism, he can be refreshingly honest and insightful. Like the peculiar yet sporadically ‘funny’ Russell Brand, he’s pushed the envelope on what is and isn’t acceptable on TV. Thus, since we became inured to a media where the ‘F’ word and other obscenities litter the airwaves, eventually replacing a more elegant, literate wit (Stephen Fry, anyone?) we have a new landscape in entertainment which can accommodate the (admittedly hilarious) tongue-lashing cruelty of comics like Frankie Boyle yet still keep the non-PC crowd such as Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown off our screens.

But as Ross and Brand have demonstrated, in their dual roles as the Robert Mugabes of laffland, even the fortress of fame can’t protect you from the wrath of the Daily Mail’s Joe Public. What they did to poor old Andrew Sachs was utterly unforgivable. It was crude, cruel and thoughtless. This was action which sprang from that arrogant cold front of invincibility which surrounds fame and celebrity. Pushing the envelope is one thing – but what happens once the envelope is destroyed?

The BBC’s handling of the situation was a total mess. Ross and Brand should have been brought to a TV studio to face Andrew Sachs, and in a proverbial sackcloth and ashes scenario, made to apologise profusely for their behaviour in front of their countless adoring fans. End of story; wrists slapped by the hand of humiliation, lesson learned, move on. But now a whole string of BBC subordinates lose their jobs. At least Brand had the courage and decency to resign, which is a surprise, as one suspects his ego even transcends that of Ross. So now we have every new comic looking over his shoulder. Good-hearted old British smut is under threat, because two very arrogant, rich men temporarily disconnected themselves from any semblance of decency and compassion. Like the execrable Anne Robinson, they have added extra voltage to the green light for cruelty. Ross will, however, be missed, and his belated return in 2009 will kick-start this whole debate all over again.

   Jonathan Ross’s loss of a million pounds will be, as it would be to Frank Skinner, a pinprick.

Humour always has to have a victim, but not every laugh is a happy one. Let’s leave it undecided with Lord Byron:

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,

‘Tis that I may not weep.

He came to power on the back of an old, faithful beast - the Labour Party. This worthy organisation was once known to support something called 'socialism'. Ordinary workers, trade unionists, all made their devoted contributions to the benign old beast and it lumbered along towards the end of the millennium with hope and flagging energy. But the old beast was cut down and slaughtered, to be replaced with a slick, guffawing hyena known as 'New' Labour. With the Tories the population of Britain knew where they were. Margaret Thatcher's version of conservatism made stark yet tranparent promises. We shall be nasty. We shall change the politics of hope into something called the 'Free' Market. And they carried out their promises whilst New Labour railed against their corruption and acts of social sabotage. But, detest and loathe Thatcher as we may, what you saw was what you got. 1979 was a poison bottle with a big skull and crossbones on the label, but Britain took out the cork and swigged it down. The dregs of this toxic brew were then saved in a dark cupobard on Walworth Road until 1997.

As John Prescott (who imagines he is something to do with 'the working class') agonises over whether to take the ermine and swill yet more champagne alongside Baroness Maggie and Lord Archer, his old toff of a boss has made quite sure that we can crystallise the hatred we feel for traitors to the real proletariat into a sharp, tungsten spear point.

So, what is Mr. 'Education, education' education' up to these days?
The former Prime Minister travels around the world on speaking engagements, and can command up to $250,000 (£157,000) for a 90 minute speech. He works exclusively through the blue-chip Washington Speakers Bureau.

Mr Blair has made £4.6 million from his memoirs, around £2 million from his role with investment bank JP Morgan, £500,000 from Zurich Financial Services asw ell as £84,000 of taxpayers money to run a private office and an annual pension of £63,468.

He has earned more money from speeches than Bill Clinton, the former US president, did in his first year after leaving office, The Times reported.

The paper said there is fear at the United Nations that Mr Blair's focus on commercial interests is jeopardising his unpaif role as Middle East envoy.

Such is the demand for Mr Blair, that he has a two-year waiting list for bookings, with clients prepared to pay $250,000 (£157,000) for a typical speech of roughly 90 minutes.

"He is one of the biggest stars in the world. Who else is there?" said Max Markson, the public relations organiser who has taken Mr Clinton, Cherie Blair and Nelson Mandela to Australia.

Mr Blair has become a particular favourite with the Washington-based Carlyle Group. Next month he will address a conference of its European investors in Paris about "geopolitics". He addressed a similar conference for Carlyle in Dubai in February.

Carlyle Group is a leading private equity investor in the military. Its board has been graced by both Presidents Bush and its former European chairman was Sir John Major. We drank the poison yet again. 

A SNOOP TOO FAR FROM NEW LABOUR JOEYS

I apologise if this reads as if it is emanating from some paranoid, anorak-wearing conspiracy theorist, but the news set before us is not the stuff of Orwellian fantasy – this is real – this is New Britain, 2008 style – and if you value what civil liberties we still possess, you must fight back.

Two infamous Joes – Goebbels and Stalin, must be looking up from their hotbeds in Hell with pride. Their sinister methodology for dealing with dissent may well have been the diametric opposite in thinking to what the founders of the Labour Party once held dear – the democratic right to privacy and protest. However, the sharp-suited, muddled brains of 21^st century Millbank are obviously in love with the tenets of intrusive terror history’s most famous Joeys held close to their festering, compassion-free hearts. Not content with perpetuating the myriad miseries of their batty Auntie Margaret, kow-towing to the perpetrators of Guantanamo Bay and Abu-Graihib and pouring billions of our money into the fat cat pockets of Northern Rock, they now seek to intrude into the last remaining corners of our private lives in one huge secret sweep designed to weed out anyone who does not voice unconditional support for their masters in Washington.

A bill has been presented in the Government’s draft legislation programme for 2008 that will give the Government total power to snoop on our electronic communications.

The Communications Data Bill is due to come before the House of Commons in November. Even the Government’s Information Commissioner is none too impressed with this proposed bill.
Richard Thomas warned the database would be "a step too far for the British way of life".
He said: "Do we really want the police, security services and other organs of the state to have access to more and more aspects of our private lives?“
What this bill means is that the Government can snoop on your phone calls (mobile or landline), your emails and your web browsing without you knowing.
At the moment this information is available to the police and a long list of other agencies but they need to request it from the operators. The operators in turn have a responsibility to ensure that the requests are fair and reasonable, and that the information provided is accurate. A request has to be for the communications activity of an individually identified person. That can be identified by a name, an IP address, a Phone number etc.

TAKE ACTION!
The Government is inviting comments or questions about these proposals to CommsData@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk. With the low standing of the government at the moment they may be inclined to drop any controversial legislation, so it’s well worth sending them an email, and getting friends/colleagues to do the same, telling them exactly what you think of their plans.

Let Rip Microsite! Tell them what you think.

Let Rip! is the new Our World Our Say microsite where you can tell politicians, organisations, or anyone else, what you think of them –
http://let-rip.ourworldoursay.org/

We have listed several notable people, political parties and organisations who you can email directly – if however you don't see the person or organisation you wish to write to, we will find an address for you to write to.

If you think other people would like to use the service, you can email your message to them at the same time. http://let-rip.ourworldoursay.org/

Freedom means responsibility – perhaps that’s why we most dread it, but this is a step too far for any government. Tyranny is always better organised than liberty.

    Let's face it - almost everyone hates traffic wardens. In the past, they used to be a local authority-run adjunct of the Police. This usually meant a proper training course, and wardens in possession of a modicum of skill for discretion and compromise. But as the privatisation of transport and hospital cleaning has proved - and, for that matter, rubbish collection - once you farm out such work to the lowest bidder then the old adage about paying peanuts and getting monkeys comes into full swing. Such is the case with the town of Mansfield.

    The recent ‘de-criminalisation’ of parking has led numerous Councils throughout the UK to look for options on how to tackle the rise in illegal parking. The least creative and most profitable route, is to contract out the policing of parking to the lowest bidder. Needless to say, this profits-above-people solution is the one Mansfield District Council have opted for, and everyone, from the disabled to the hapless resident whose wheels are a few inches out of a parking bay, are now feeling the full force of NCP’s privatised ‘parking attendants’ and their policy of zero-tolerance.

    Almost 30 tickets have been issued between 14 residents on West Hill Drive in the space of a few days, and no doubt by the time this letter appears, that number will have increased significantly. Families with more than one vehicle in an already congested area have been easy pickings for issuing multiple tickets, but the contrast between the discretion and common sense of our original Local Authority Wardens, overseen by the Police, who vanished off our streets some years ago, and the new NCP profit-only shock troops, is remarkable. Previously, if a resident was waiting the delivery of a new Residential Permit, providing you let the Wardens know, then a period of grace was allowed. Not any longer. There seems to be a specific vindictiveness attached to NCP’s attendants, who appear to devote more time to clocking up as many PCN’s (Penalty Charge Notices – or ‘NCP’ backwards) as possible. NCP’s administration will firmly deny that there are any incentives paid for the number of tickets issued in a day. However, NCP parking attendants in Westminster receive a £50 bonus if they maintain a monthly average of issuing two tickets per hour, and this increases to £215 if the attendant can bag three motorists per hour – and there is a monthly cup awarded to the attendant issuing the most tickets. Could this be happening in Mansfield? NCP will probably deny it happens at all, but there must be some hidden force which drives the compassionless fanaticism now faced daily by Mansfield motorists.
 

    What lies behind this nastiness are ‘Key Performance Indicators’ (KPIs) – or, to the simple layman, profit – something NCP are good at. When Torbay, in Devon, a town with similar population to Mansfield, dismissed their original local authority wardens, the annual number of tickets issued was 4,581. Then the Torbay Council farmed the job out to NCP. Result? 28,500 tickets issued annually. It is claimed that KPIs include other aspects of a parking attendant’s job, but the ticketing targets loom large in key performance indicators. Another NCP-blighted city, Edinburgh, recently had to scrap 3,000 wrongly-issued parking tickets and pay back £90,000 in wrongly collected fines – yet Edinburgh Council still made £5.6 million from parking. How much will Mansfield make?

So, brace yourselves, Mansfield drivers – forget hoodies - there’s a new gang on the block and they’re definitely out to get you. Forget reasonable excuses for minor infringements. NCP have ticketed fire brigade vehicles, milk floats and even a funeral procession – one disabled man got a ticket because his blue badge was ‘upside down’. So, we have no chance. What strange, rapacious and unpleasant company our elected members prefer to keep. Zero tolerance is an attractive idea, but in this case it ruins the delicate balance between the public and authority and turns hitherto peaceful souls into angry victims disdainful of the law – and utterly intolerant of those who seem to enjoy enforcing it.