In an absurd Comedy of PC Errors, new Cumbrian Tory MP Rory Stewart has had to apologise publicly for making accurate and utterly harmless comments about some of his constituents. In an interview published in the Scottish Sun and written by their “celebrity” interviewer, Matt Bendoris, it was clear that, despite their owner’s professed allegiance to David Cameron’s Conservative Party, the paper’s agenda was to make Stewart look elitist and out of touch, jeering at what they perceived to be his “toff” characteristics, in order, one imagines to curry favour with their intolerant and bigoted Scottish readers.
    Stewart is described, in the windy outdoors of the Lake District, as having “unruly black hair Worzel Gummidge would have been proud of.” [“Worzel Gummidge” is a standard Sun cliché for ‘slightly untidy’, and for years was invariably applied by the paper to the late Labour leader, Michael Foot.]
    His “tailor-made suit” (did Bendoris ask him or did he sneak a look at the label)  had “a light dusting of  dandruff,” not visible in either of the onsite photos published with the article.
    Stewart also “fiddles with his cuff-links a lot, like Prince Charles..” [another republican Sun bête noir] “..and speaks a little like him too.” [This is a standard Sun jibe at what they perceive to be an elitist toff accent. How, you may ask, would they describe the accent of News International CEO, Rebekah Brooks’ husband, Charlie, an old-Etonian, lapsed race-horse trainer.]
    Bendoris himself goes on to describe the residents of Langwathby, the village they are visiting, as “slightly potty” – a statement for which the hack has not felt it necessary to apologise.
    Stewart’s good manners in looking interested in the scare-crow competition he was inspecting is dismissed as a “toff trait”.
    Bendoris wonders why someone who made it into GQ Magazine’s Top 50 Men of 2010 [whatever that accolade is worth] should want to come to the back of beyond [just off the M6 between Preston and Carlisle].
    Then he quotes Stewart: “Some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of TWINE (sic) and that sort of thing.”
    And it’s for this that Stewart has been forced to apologise and describe his own remarks as “extremely foolish”.
    The local paper, the Carlisle News & Star, said he had been branded as arrogant and crass.
    The Guardian suggested that Stewart had called his constituents “yokels” which he hadn’t.
    It’s hard to see who can have been insulted by what Stewart had said (admittedly with a certain degree of naivety, given that he was talking to a man from a Murdoch rag). No one I know who wears binder twine would give a damn. In order to convey the flavour of the Welsh Marches where I live, I have often described some of the inhabitants in the more remote corners as using binder twine for a belt, because they do – it’s not a criticism; it’s not a condemnation; it’s not insulting; it’s just what they do (and why the hell shouldn’t they – anymore than young men in inner cities choosing not to wear belts so that their jeans can hang halfway down their arses?)

Rory Stewart is undoubtedly a bit of an eccentric smarty-pants – and thank God for that in a time when this is too rare. I suspect he is also more knowledgeable, more dedicated, braver, more resourceful and immeasurably more entertaining than the mediocre, cliché-scribbling pip-squeak who interviewed him. But, of course, it gave the hack a chance to have a dig at the British upper-middle classes that Rupert Murdoch has despised since he was shunned by a few of them when he was at Oxford back in  the ‘50s. A vain old man scorned can be dangerously single-minded.

Popularity: 2% [?]

A High Court Judge was reported by the Guardian to have described Prince Charles’ intervention in the redevelopment of the Chelsea Barracks site as “unexpected and unwelcome”.
    I was surprised; Mr Justice Vos is a judge who is careful about expressing his own views. Then I find that the Guardian got it wrong – the judge said that the developers “regarded this intervention, no doubt, as unexpected and unwelcome.”
    I don’t doubt it was unwelcome; a lot of money down the line, they didn’t want their plans turned over now; but I frankly doubt that it was unexpected.
    Prince Charles has frequently and famously expressed his views on architecture; it was unlikely that he would overlook the treatment of a key site in central London, adjacent to the C18th classicism of Chelsea’s Royal Hospital, more especially when he had been approached by a large group of the public who feared the imposition of an unsympathetic, uncompromisingly modernistic structure, on a huge scale.
    If the prince has a function, passing on the views of many thousands with less scope for influence seems an entirely supportable one, especially in the face of the solipsistic arrogance of the architect involved. Lord Rogers had often displayed his intolerance of those who don’t share his vision of a landscape that belongs to and effects us all.
    His loudest objection to Prince Charles’ expressed concerns is that it is undemocratic, but there is distressingly little democracy behind deciding what buildings will fill our landscape.
   Take the beautiful town of Ludlow, where I live.
   There is a deep, immensely uplifting charm to a place that has retained 800 years of varied and developing building styles, which escapes very few visitors and is treasured by the more civilized inhabitants. However, when it was decided to put up a new library, the developers in conjunction with county council planners produced a scheme for a huge, industrial looking building, vastly out of scale with every edifice around it (apart from an already disastrous redbrick supermarket).
    There was, of course, a “consultation”, in which a host of individuals and organisations expressed their profound objections to the great modernistic shed that was proposed. These “consultations” are the “democratic process” behind which arrogant architects, bull-headed, big-spending council officials and profit-motivated developers hide.
    In a poll conducted by Building magazine, in which readers were asked to choose between Richard Rogers’ plan for Chelsea Barracks, or an alternative drawn up by traditional architect, Quinlan Terry and based on a classicism which has recurred and given great satisfaction and pleasure since the Greeks first created the concept, it isn’t at all surprising that Terry’s plan drew 60% of votes cast.

Disgracefully, there is no voting, no obligation on the part of planning hearings to take any notice of the views and wishes of the people who live in a town – who own their landscape. So I find myself now working in a library which is a cavernous, noisy space, which seems to function as a meet and chat venue, where large quantities of higher space are unused, and commercial activity occupies a proportion of the charmless lump of a bulding. The planners also bequeathed the town an ugly, useless little open space in front of the hulk, “perceived” by the County Council, “to attract people, thus benefitting nearby traders.” It is nearly always empty, occupied by discarded chewing gum and lager bottles.
    There are countless towns and cities throughout Britain that have been ruined in this way, and there have been many occasions when the public have yearned for someone of sufficient influence to raise a voice in support of their objections.
      The almost compete vandalization of the once lovely city of Gloucester, of which only the sublime cathedral and its immediate close remain, wouldn’t have happened if there had been a Prince Charles to suggest to the culprits that they should consider not just the wishes of their rate payers, but also the longer lasting qualities of traditional, vernacular and less aggressively modernistic building design.

Popularity: 3% [?]

At the Mansion House yesterday the Chancellor spoke reassuringly and – to be fair – convincingly about his plans to disband the FSA and return powers of bank regulation to the Bank of England.
His current stance would have inspired more confidence if, at a key moment in the international banking crisis, after the Tory Conference in September ’08, he had conceded what was obvious to most observers, that as Shadow Chancellor he had done far too little (actually nothing) in opposing the Labour Government’s laissez-faire, “light touch” policy on banking regulation. He had an opportunity, in an interview after a good performance on the podium to own up to this; but he didn’t. http://www.peterburden.net/archives/585
He had certainly not at that stage proposed the abolition of the toothless, footling FSA.
It is extraordinary to most intelligent observers that politicians do not understand that the thinking punters really appreciate honest self-appraisal in their political leaders, and a sincere acknowledgement of their failures – in opposition as well as in Government. It wasn’t until nearly a year after (in July ‘09) that Osborne first hinted at the idea of abolishing the FSA.
And in March ’09, he had called for a full investigation into any possible criminal activity behind the almost incredible losses ramped up by our banks and paid for by us – in spades – right now and for the next umpteen years – according to the Prime Minister.
No more has been made of this zeal to investigate and prosecute, despite the committing of what has been the biggest white-collar crime in the City of London since the Lloyds Insurance debacle of the ‘80s, when thousands of private individuals were deliberately defrauded of vast sums, leading to many personal bankruptcies and misery for innocent dupes. And not one collar has ever been felt for it.
I hope the new Chancellor shows more balls in pursuing and punishing the guilty men who are now costing us all so much.

Popularity: 4% [?]

The revelations on Civil Service pay simply confirm what I and other non-ranting commentators have said all along – that MPs are paid far too little, and the expenses farrago was brought about only by their own cowardice in not confronting an ignorant electorate over it.

Popularity: 4% [?]

On May 6th I’ll be voting for my incumbent MP, because he has been consistently hard-working within the constituency since he was elected in 2005; because if his party wins, he would be a constructive and commercially experienced treasury minister; because he was untainted by the expenses fiasco and because he is manifestly the best candidate in this election to represent our constituency.
Phillip Dunne is a Tory and I am glad to give him my support.
I am less glad to be promoting the interest and influence of the Murdoch family, and the presence of a Murdoch placeman in a Tory-held No.10.
Most conservative MPs would deny that the electorate cares much about this aspect of a potential Tory government – which underestimates the discerning, as yet uncommitted voter, for the efficacy of the Tory Murdoch-hugging strategy is proving highly questionable now that the days of winning elections in partnership with the Sun newspaper are long past; indeed the whole Murdoch/Tory love-in threatens to neuter the party’s earlier electoral strength
Perhaps old Rupert Rumplechops has been playing a double-bluff when he’s claimed to favour Brown (a most implausible coupling), aware that overt Murdoch support might jeopardise the Tories’ chance of victory.
The old boy is by no means too vain to be that subtle.

Popularity: 4% [?]