A cock-and-bill story

Malcolm spent yesterday afternoon at the British Museum form the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition. This being about Roman domesticity, penises form a large — nay, grotesquely inflated — part of the show.

Can it be coincidence that a similar manifestation occurs in Anne Treneman’s Political Sketch for the Times? Both occasions seem to involve, in the context of Europe and imminent fall-out, some form of goat-fuck:

… beyond a cluster fuck, worse than a FUBAR. Continued attempts to correct the situation only make the situation worse and more embarrassing.

This is La Treneman at her brightest and best, doing a delicious vamp:

Welcome to Eurovision, Westminster style. I had no idea when I went along to the Private Member’s Bill ballot yesterday that it was going to be so much fun. For this is not a ballot at all. It’s more a raffle, with a bit of bingo thrown in and also darts, as in when they bellow “One Hundred and Eighty!”

Our Master of Ceremonies was Lindsay Hoyle, the Deputy Speaker whose sense of fun and Lancashire accent are proving a huge hit these days. He had a glamorous assistant, of course. Tall, thin, dressed as a penguin with a white bow-tie, his real name was David Natzler and he was Clerk of Legislation but, of course, we started to call him Debbie.

She concludes:

“Shake ’em up!” cried Lindsay as the big moment arrived. “The winner of the day is … ”

“One hundred and ninety-nine,” announced Debbie.

“Oooohhhhh!” cried the audience.

Lindsay flipped through his list. “James Wharton!”

We looked at each other. Who? Still, within minutes, we were being flooded with information about Mr Wharton. He was the young (aged 29) Tory from Stockton and a Eurosceptic. His majority was tiny (332) and he had made the news for being linked with a company that sells stone statues of giant penises.

Sorry, but it’s true. It may not be in the best taste but, then, this IS Eurovision.

Two after-shocks:

1. Malcolm’s classical eddikashun makes him want to prefer the plural form as penes. It is also the Oxford Dictionary‘s preferred plural form, where penises is dismissed as Brit. Curiously, penes is also the term used to mean “in the possession of …” or “in the hands of …” One hits upon it occasionally in footnotes and bibliophile commentaries. Logically penises are commonly “in the hands of …”, but there is no direct etymological link.

2.Then there’s the business of It may not be in the best taste but …

Forty years ago there was a previous Pompeii exhibition in London. As Malcolm recalls, it was sponsored by the Daily Telegraph. An acquaintance of the Lady in Malcolm’s Life was commissioned to produce the educational poster to accompany the show. The artist’s proclivities were well enough known for the instruction to include “and definitely no penises”.

This became a challenge. Sure enough, there is at least one member, suitably disguised, included. Malcolm still has the mounted (ahem!) item in the Redfellow Hovel attic.

The visitation of York

The days of Redfellow Hovel are coming to an end.  The Lady in his Life and Malcolm are contemplating moving on and out of Cobbett’s —

… great wen of all. The monster, called by the silly coxcombs of the press, “the metropolis of the empire”

Where to go?

A strong probability is York.

Thanks to its ecclesiastical heritage, the centre of York, within the ancient walls, is a place of persisting character. Thanks to the rise of nearby industrial cities, York missed out on the grime of the industrial revolution. Thanks to George Hudson, it remains a major transport hub — a couple of hours in either direction from London and Edinburgh, or across the Pennines to Manchester. Thanks to Joseph Rowntree and Terry’s, there was some successful local industry. Thanks to tourism, facilities, entertainment, trade and shopping are excellent to this day. In 1617 James VI and I received a petition to establish a university at York, and it duly arrived in 1964.

The problem is finding a house of some character. Anything ‘period’, especially within the walls, is quickly snapped up — which raises the questions of whether a significant property bubble is puffing up (in London that needs an affirmative “yes”),  how long can it last, and what comes thereafter?

The Railway Magazine, No. 1, Vol. 1 (July 1897)

Here we find W.J.Scott, BA, recounting his personal experience of The Race to Edinburgh, 1888 — the Last Day. That needs some background, perhaps.

The two competing railway routes between London and Scotland are the East and West Coast. The West Coast Mainline (as it now termed) is the more difficult, particularly the climb over Shap Summit, built by the engineer Joseph Locke for the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway. The East Coast route, by comparison, is far easier, straighter and faster.

On 2nd June 1888 the West Coast announced a nine-hour (down from ten) schedule for the express to Edinburgh: thereby, for the first time, matching the schedule of the North-Eastern Railway.

On 18th July the North-Eastern reduced the timing from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley by half-an-hour.

From 1st August the London and North-Western brought the Euston to Princes Street West Coast schedule down to the same 8½ hours. This was achieved by splitting the express at Preston, so reducing the weight to be slogged over Shap. In passing, gentle reader, you are now apprised of why Edinburgh had two major stations.

Ha! The NER had one in reserve. Two days after what was seen as the L&NW’s last throw, the NER announced the 10 am express would be in Waverley by 6 pm. Not so: on 6th August the L&NW were promising an eight hour timing for the Euston to Princes Street run. Finally, with train crews lionised and up for the competition, unofficial times were notched down day-by-day — eventually to the concern of the railway hierarchy. Peace broke out with the NER settling for the 5:45pm arrival, and the L&NW for an eight-hour trip. The Caledonian Railway, responsible for the final stretch from Carlisle to Princes Street, had a new Drummond single-wheeler, number 123, and wanted to show its mettle/metal: so consistently 123 (and she’s still gorgeous) hauled into Princes Street well ahead of  the timetabled 172 minutes for the run.

This was the first “race to the North”, and made newspaper headlines in Britain — and even in the United States.

W.J.Scott, BA, goes to York

Mr Scott didn’t make the whole trip: he baled out at York (and the 10 am from King’s Cross reached Waverley at 5:27 pm that evening). Let him dilate:

For the most part, towns on the Continent are more picturesque and interesting than those in England, though the country in Britain is far more beautiful than any we find across the Channel; but York can hold its own for quaintness and grandeur with almost any town of like size in Europe. Under a bright mid-day sun, the old city with its girdling walls and crown of towers looked very beautiful: despite some stir of life, and the jingle of tram-cars, it seemed very still, its river slipping by as great Emperor Constantine saw it glide in the self same channel, lapping the walls of houses that stood where the houses one looks at from Lendal Bridge or Ousegate Bridge stand today. Never a “buried city”: a Roman capital, a chief city of the North English kingdom, and of the kindred Danes which over-ran that kingdom; a seat of Government, the “Council of the North” in mediæval days, and now metropolis of Northern England (though the Scottish Lowlands have thrown off the yoke of the English primate), and a railway capital behind London alone in importance, Eboracum, Eoforwic, Iorvik, York, in the year 200 AD  or the year 1900, from Severus and Paulinus to Dr. Maclagan — and should we say George S. Gibb? — she still “sits a queen”. Only three and a half hours from London; but how utterly unlike London is the tongue one hears spoken — that strong, if sometimes rough, North English, which Southerners always call “Scotch”, though at least five English shires share it with the Lowlands across the border. In the garden of the toll-house of “Lendall Brigg” — since done away with — a small boy is trying in vain to catch a white rabbit.”Tak’ it up by lugs, bairn, tak’t up by lugs!” cries his elder brother, much to the bewilderment of a tourist from the south who stands listening.

You don’t get away with paragraphs, even sentences that complex any more. For the record:

• Severus was the Roman Emperor who attempted to reoccupy the lands north of Hadrian’s Wall, invading Caledonia in 208, and dying at York in 211.
• Paulinus (died 644) was the first Bishop of York, one of the second group of missionaries sent by Pope Gregory I.
• The Most Rev. Dr William Dal­rymple Maclagan was Archbishop of York between 1891 and 1908.
• Sir George Stegmann Gibb was the innovatory General Manager of the North Eastern Railway from 1891 until, in 1906, he went on to become Managing Director of the Underground Electric Railway Company of London (running the four main London underground lines). Gibb introduced statistical analysis and American business practices, but also applied collective bargaining and independent arbitration when dealing with his employees.

Oh, and all those timings involved a twenty minute wait at York for “dinner”.

Fawked tongue

A day or two back, Guido Fawkes — in full self-wetting mode — was ecstatic that:

Hidden in the gilding on the walls of 10 Downing Street, the small, subtle but powerful image of a thatcher climbing the cornicing. A golden legacy…

That is lifted from a flickr.com sequence. Three images along, in the same sequence, is another non-Thatcher, non-tribute (these things predated the old bat by some distance in time). A lizard? A salamander?

A poem from Oliver Herford:

The Salamander made his bed
Among the glowing embers red.
A Fiery Furnace, to his mind,
Hygiene and Luxury combined.
He was, if I may put it so,
A Saurian Abednigo.
He loved to climb with nimble ease
The branches of the Gas-log Trees
Where oft on chilly winter nights
He rose to dizzy Fahrenheits.
Believers in Soul Transmigration
See in him the Re-incarnation
Of those Sad Plagues of summer, who
Ask, “Is it hot enough for you?”

Hint: the glowing embers red are out-living whatever she wrought.

City(e)scape 2

Still with the Times Literary Supplement, Malcolm recognised many locations in J . Mordaunt Crook’s review:

London: Hidden Interiors — sponsored by English Heritage, in all the glory of digital polychrome … With 1,700 images of some 180 buildings, it guides the reader from Central London to the suburbs; spiralling out from Westminster, the West End and Mayfair to Soho, Covent Garden, Fitzrovia and Clerkenwell; then on to the City and its eastern fringes, winding clockwise around the capital’s southern suburbs, before moving westwards and terminating in the north. The text by Philip Davies is crisp and informative; the photographs by Derek Kendall are a revelation.

In short, a glossy coffee-table book, but none the worse for that. £40 on the label, but Amazon are knocking it out for £28. Malcolm is severely tempted.

Industrial majesty and might

What got to Malcolm wasn’t necessarily those grandiose palaces (which he has, in many cases, passed through) but the lesser, more unapproachable, even more domestic places. There is, for example, the alternative splendour of Battersea Power Station (which Christopher Fowler featured when he reviewed, briefly, this book):

Of this Crook says:

Battersea Power Station is only too well known. Outside, it is the biggest brick building in Europe. Inside, its mighty Control Room — all switches, buttons and flickering dials — seems like an Art Deco vision from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Yet, in a way, its electronic marvels are eclipsed in memory by engineering of quite a different sort. Crossness Engine House SE2 — the greatest achievement of the Metropolitan Board of Works — survives today as a cathedral or iron. It was opened in1865, and its throbbing machinery is guarded by sinuous polychrome grills and powered by the largest rotative beam engine in the world. It was designed to pump thousands of gallons of sewage into the ebbing tide of the Thames. This is function carried to the level of sublimity.

One thing is sure: millions of tourists visit London. How many will see such temples of industry? Indeed, how many Londoners have ventured to Crossness? They should. They really should:

A sense of déjà vu all over again?

When we see these images, even those who have never, ever, been in London, feel there is something familiar. There’s the Midland Bank vault on Poultry, just opposite the Bank of England:

Now, err … where do we see that? Ah! Goldfinger!

And again:

That’s the Masonic Temple, hidden in the depths of what used to be the Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool Street (now the Andaz). Cit gents could nip in for a quick roll-up of the trouser leg before heading back to the sticks of East Anglia. You are told, when you penetrate this holy-of-holies that it was rediscovered by accident by the renovation works in 1997. Now it hired for weddings, hoolies, fashion shows and film shoots.

The 134 bus route to Redfellow Hovel

There’s a couple of these interiors, far less grand but worth the visit, on Malcolm’s road home:

In Muswell Hill Broadway [Davies] drops in on Martyn’s family grocers: its barrels of biscuits, its sacks of coffee, all marshalled with military precision.

If Martyn’s don’t have it, it’s not worth the tasting. When coffee is being roasted, the whole neighbourhood knows about it.

And:

In Kentish Town Road, he even marvels at the droopy garments in Bluston’s window: “frocks and gowns for the older woman” (also listed Grade II).

That’s the shop-front, one trusts. Not the “older woman”. The star “frock”, laid out now for some long time, has been a red-spotted outfit, which always reminds Malcolm of Minnie Mouse.

An afterthought

By a strange symbiosis, there’s another attraction on the 134 bus route in this week’s TLS. It’s the very last item on the back page, from that NB Londoners page noted previously:

We know that people say weird things to people who work in bookshops, which is the premiss of More Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops …

All are related by Jen Campbell, who works at Ripping Yarns, a secondhand bookshop in London …

Now, let’s be precise here. Ripping Yarns is on the corner where Southwood Lane becomes Muswell Hill Road, and intersects with the fag end of the Archway Road. Right opposite Highgate tube station and the Woodman pub.

Malcolm knows it well. Once there, pubs not intervening, he’s nearly home.

City(e)scape 1

The current issue of The Times Literary Supplement, despite the exotic and even scary cover (Beauty and terror), has something of a metropolitan theme (and will keep Malcolm happy for these couple of posts)

Joycean

With both The Guardian‘s  Doonesbury strip and the TLS rear-gunner NB (initialled J. C., so assume James Campbell) Malcolm starts at the back and works forward. Since J.C. subtitles NB as ‘Londoners’ we know where we’re heading. It’s a subtle sophistication: NB‘s first and main item concerns James Joyce in London  (‘Londoners’ — geddit?)

This includes the quite perverse statement:

In an article in the current James Joyce Quarterly, Gordon Bowker writes that the Irish writer’s link with the former ruling power “has not received the attention it deserves”.

Really? Really?

Malcolm diffidently suggests that Bowker revisits Oxen of the Sun. What Joyce does there is filter the authentic voices of Dublin through the tradition of ‘English’ authors, or rather those represented by a couple of contemporary collections: William Peacock’s The English Prose: From Mandeville to Ruskin (1903) and George Saintsbury’s The Anthology of English Prose (1912). Anyone who, like Malcolm, studied the snippets anthologised for Leaving Certificate (1960) will see where this sub-litcrit is coming from.

Those who wrestle Joyce’s Episode into submission may well do so with help from the explanatory letter Joyce sent Frank Budgen on 20 March 1920:

Am working hard at Oxen of the Sun, the idea being the crime committed against fecundity by sterilizing the act of coition. Scene, lying-in hospital. Technique: a nineparted episode without divisions introduced by a Sallustian-Tacitean prelude (the unfertilized ovum), then by way of earliest English alliterative and monosyllabic and Anglo-Saxon (‘Before born the babe had bliss. Within the womb he won worship.’ ‘Bloom dull dreamy heard: in held hat stony staring’) then by way of Mandeville (‘there came forth a scholar of medicine that men clepen etc’) then Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (‘but that franklin Lenehan was prompt ever to pour them so that at the least way mirth should not lack’), then the Elizabethan chronicle style (‘about that present time young Stephen filled all cups’), then a passage solemn, as of Milton, Taylor, Hooker, followed by a choppy Latin-gossipy bit, style of Burton-Browne,  then  a  passage  Bunyanesque  (‘the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore whose name she said is Bird in the hand’) after a diarystyle bit Pepys-Evelyn (‘Bloom sitting snug with a party of wags, among them Dixon jun., Ja. Lynch, Doc. Madden and Stephen D. for a languor he had before and was now better, he having dreamed tonight a strange fancy and Mistress Purefoy there to be delivered, poor body, two days past her time and the midwives hard put to it, God send her quick issue’) and so on through Defoe-Swift and Steele-Addison-Sterne and Landor-Pater-Newman until it ends in a frightful jumble of Pidgin English, nigger English, Cockney, Irish, Bowery slang and broken doggerel. This progression is also linked back at each part subtly with some foregoing episode of the day and, besides this, with the natural stages of development in the embryo and the periods of faunal evolution in general. The double-thudding Anglo-Saxon motive recurs from time to time (‘Loth to move from Horne’s house’) to give the sense of the hoofs of oxen. Bloom is the spermatozoon, the hospital the womb, the nurse the ovum, Stephen the embryo.

Letters of James Joyce, vol. 1, ed. Stuart Gilbert (New York, 1966), pp. 139-40.

Hardly hidden in there is the Anglo-Irish thing that plagues us all: Swift (born Dublin, 1667), Steele (born Dublin, 1672), Burke (born Dublin, 1729), Goldsmith (born Roscommon or Longford, probably 1730) — all who made their reputations in London. In fact the ‘nationality’ crisis is implicit throughout: Mandeville was really Jan de Langhe from Ypres, a Fleming writing in Norman-French, Sir Thomas Maleore may have been Welsh … Newman, the London High Anglican who translated himself from London to Dublin(at the request of the Irish bishops) establishing the Catholic University of Ireland.

Anyway, back to J.C. filleting that James Joyce Quarterly:

The English were generous to Joyce, Bowker says: he received a grant from the Society of Authors and a pension from the Royal Literary Fund. In 1923, T.S.Eliot, who would later publish Finnegans Wake at Faber, took him to see (in Eliot’s words) “some of the waste lands around Chichester”. On a gravestone in Sidlesham churchyard, Joyce read the name “Earwicker”. Thus, Bowker writes, “an ancient English name stands at the centre of Finnegans Wake and winds through it”.

Nora Barnacle, who loved London, went shopping while Jim And Anna Livia set about enlarging basic Irish-English. He and Nora were married at Kensington Register Office in 1931 (Pound was married at the church next door). In the Electoral Register for 1931-2, James Joyce of 28b Campden Grove is listed as eligible for jury service. The other tenants were Nora and May Joyce … A neighbour was called Miss Gertrude Stein.

Quite what all of that ‘proves’, beyond West London being then, as now, cosmopolitan and liter-arty, is beyond Malcolm’s comprehension.

Send for the Reverend Dodgson

[If you don't get the headline, try here.]

We learn:

The Scotland Yard inquiry in to the “Plebgate” row which led to Andrew Mitchell resigning as chief whip has cost an estimated £144,000 so far…

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan is leading the investigation, dubbed Operation Alice.

She wrote: “It remains that I have 30 officers at my disposal and the Operation Alice is estimated to have cost £144,000 to date.

The interesting thing there is not the numbers (Metropolitan Police numbers — as when declaring how many were demonstrating — are notoriously ‘elastic’) but the title.

‘Operation Alice” as in

… Wonderland?

or

Through the Looking Glass?

Song for song

The Daily Mail is as baleful today as ever.

It hit upon a story that — in its peculiar parallel universe — has everything. Try it:

• Romany Blythe, 45, created ‘The Witch Is Dead Party’ Facebook group
• Works with ‘potentially criminalised individuals’ in drama workshops
• ‘They danced in the streets when Hitler died too,’ she said today
• Previously claimed her PIP breast implants caused a miscarriage
• Special needs teacher Craig Parr, 27, works at Miliband’s old school
• Organised Brixton ‘death party’, holding ‘Rejoice. Thatcher is dead’ placard
• Invited people to celebrate death of UK’s first female Prime Minister

The drama teacher behind one of the vile Thatcher ‘death parties’ today compared Britain’s greatest post-war prime minister to Hitler as it was revealed she had breast implants on the NHS.

Romany Blythe, 45, who helps troubled children at schools in Brighton, has created an internet page called: ‘The witch is dead’ and encouraged thousands to ‘p***’ on the Iron Lady’s grave.

Miliband’s  old school … a  finishing school for the Labour  politicians of the future and tits!

Hanging’s too good for ‘em!

Then we have the rather silly business about:

The BBC is facing a difficult decision about whether it should play a Wizard Of Oz track which has had a surge of popularity in the wake of Baroness Thatcher’s death.

An online campaign has driven sales of the song – today midweek placings released by the Official Charts Company show Judy Garland’s Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead is now at number 10.

The corporation will now have to decide if they will play the 1939 tune during Radio 1′s top 40 countdown when places are finalised at the weekend.

Perhaps someone (in this case the Daily Mirror) should let the Mail in on even worse tidings:

Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead has rocketed to number one in the iTunes download chart following the death of Margaret Thatcher.

The Judy Garland version of the Wizard of Oz song hit the top spot last night following an online campaign by the Iron Lady’s critics.

It had already reached the top spot on Amazon’s sales charts on Tuesday night.

In the midweek Official Singles Chart it was listed at number 10 and is on course to be number one after selling more than 10,600 copies.

So Malcolm offers a simple solution to the Mail‘s trauma.

Fight fire with fire.

Campaign to promote a rival song:

That’s Someday my Plinth will Come. As in:

A political row erupted today over plans to erect a statue of Margaret Thatcher in central London.

Boris Johnson and Defence Secretary Philip Hammond have backed the idea, with the vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square emerging as a frontrunner for a site.

Malcolm already has the crapulent pigeons in training.

Flow, sweet river, flow

The view from the 72nd floor

From Shadwell dock to Nine Elms Reach
We cheek to cheek were dancing
Her necklace made of London Bridge
Her beauty was enhancing
Kissed her once again at Wapping,
Flow, sweet river,  flow
After that there was no stopping,
Sweet Thames, flow softly…

Or, if you must (and you should), the original by its originator:

Though, even that has a progenitor:

From those high towers this noble lord issúing
Like radiant Hesper, when his golden hair
In th’ ocean billows he hath bathèd fair,
Descended to the river’s open viewing…
     Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.

A public service announcement!

Week by week the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors rallies the (ever-more-despondent) yellow peril with rousing news of by-election … err … successes.

Curiously not this week.

There may be reasons:

1. Harwich West Ward of Tendring District Council

This what the ALDC reckoned in advance:

We have a good chance of winning this seat. We are fighting this election and we will have many leaflets to go out.  We shall be canvassing and phone canvassing.  If you can help in the by election, then this will be great.  There are four candidates, Lib Dem, Conservative, Labour and Community Reps standing.  This is a two member ward on the edge of Harwich, easy access to the A120 and A12, 25 minutes from Colchester.

And this is what came out:

Labour: 282 (elected)
Tory: 220
Community Representatives Party: 163
LibDem: 143.

2.  Evelyn Ward, Lewisham London Borough Council

Labour: 978 (elected)
Lewisham People before Profit: 404
LibDem: 131
Tory: 119
UKIP: 119

3. Parson Drove and Wisbech St Mary. Fenland District Council

Tory: 384 (elected)
LibDem: 240
UKIP: 214
English Democrats: 33

OK, OK … trivial stuff

Undoubtedly so in this world of woe.

And yet, in the shrubberies, something rustles.

The party positions in London deserve some real attention. Last week Labour stuffed everyone in sight with two run-away canters in two Islington wards. In one, St George’s Labour was up 38½%, LibDems down 28%, Tories scraping the barrel, down 6% to a risible 3.7%. Similarly, in Junction ward Labour was up 21½%, LibDems down 25%, where the previous councillor was a lapsed LibDem, — with a fair showing from a Green candidate second placed on 17½%. What makes Islington all the more intriguing is that LibDems controlled the council until 2006 _ and were the largest party until the latest Borough-wide election. LibDems now have just a dozen seats to Labour’s three dozen.

The gilt is definitely off, and the guilt all over the gingerbread. Even the troops are restless: witness Stephen Tall’s J’accuse on LibDemVoice:

Nick Clegg’s illiberal hat-trick: now immigration joins ‘secret courts’ and media regulation on the pyre

Not without reason, across the Borough boundary from Islington, Labour in Hornsey are taking seriously the all-woman shortlist for what looks increasingly like the next MP for the constituency. And Mrs Featherstone is equally frisky — the output of the ever-busy LibDem press-mill continues apace.

As night follows day

One thing was inevitable: Lynne Featherstone MP would be chirruping her approval of ‘Gids’ Osborne’s money-grubbing:

Great news – the amount you can earn before being taxed will rise to £9,440 this year. That’s £600 less tax to pay for working people, since the Liberal Democrats entered Government in 2010.

Nice of Ms Featherstone to gross up four years of tax to produce a nice number. Bet that took a load of expensive research.

But, not so!

There’s the extra VAT for a start. Since the Tory policy, pre-2010 Election, was definitively no increase in VAT, may we assume that the extra 2½% impost was a LibDem addition to ConDem domestic economics? In any case, we see Division 10 on Monday, 28 June 2010, and Ms Featherstone voting for the increase.

Shall we add in the other taxes — the kind of things Leona Helmsley reckoned were only for “the little people”?

May we start with energy tax?

Over three years, energy costs were up by nearly a quarter. A typical household bill of £1200 in 2011 will by now have devoured the entirety of that £600 tax relief. And, if it were a pensioner couple, half the winter bonus went too. Let’s not overlook that green energy tax, which is paying hundreds of millions to the wind-farmers, and 6% return on capital — half of the bunce straight out of the pockets of those working people close to Ms Featherstone’s heart.

Or what about transport tax?

In 2010 a single journey, zones 1-4, on the London Tube was £4. Today the cheapest fare, anywhere — even a single zone — is £4.50. The comparable zone 1-4 fare is £5.50. That’s an increase of 37½%!

Do we hear Ms Featherstone complain on our behalf?

“The spare room subsidy”

Then there’s the iniquitous Bedroom Tax — exactly the imposition on those lower-income working people for whom Ms Featherstone’s LibDem heart bleeds.

Even LibDem Voice (as recently as 19th March 2013) recognises it does not pass ‘the Fairer Society test’. Apart from the headline article, by John Coburn, we see on the comments some real Lib Dems in full agreement.We’d gladly hear Ms Featherstone contest Tony Greaves’s point:

The “bedroom tax” – what all the Housing Associations I know are calling it anyway – is a typical policy devised and imposed by people who would never live in social housing, who would not apply any such restrictions on themselves, who have little understanding of what it is like to live on a low income (that is to say be poor), and have little knowledge or understanding of how social housing actually works, or the circumstances in such local communities.

It is a thorough disgrace and just one of the whole series of government attacks on poor people and people who are not as fortunate as themselves and as their civil service advisers.

Did Ms Featherstone ever vote against this Bill? Oddly, whenever major small-l liberal issues make it to a Commons vote, Ms Featherstone appears invariably otherwise engaged. Hard work being bottom of the ministerial pecking order at the Department for International Development.

Reg Varney in a fright wig

A juicy morsel there, and about the most repeatable, from the Daily Mash, on Ms Featherstone’s previous gender-issue outing.

Let us celebrate that Ms Featherstone found the time and energy to put aside her other endeavours to demand — to demand! — that The Observer sack Julie Burchill. Since Ms Featherstone is pernickety about citing her ministerial commitments, lest she offend collective solidarity, this must fall under her DFID responsibilities, along with counting her air-miles. So, perhaps Ms Featherstone could contradict, with examples, Nick Cohen’s claim:

I have worked through the worst days of Bernard Ingham and Alastair Campbell’s manipulation of the media, but I have never before heard a minister in a democracy call for writers and editors to be fired for publishing an opinion, however offensive and controversial it may be. That the minister in question calls herself a “liberal” means that Featherstone is not just a menace but a hypocrite too.