If you prick us, do we not bleed?

“Easy!” says Malcolm. “Shylock to Salarino, Merchant of Venice, Act III, scene 1″. And so it is.

For pricks have been a big topic around these parts of late. The matter had been raised (ahem!) by Ms Treneman of The Times, in connection with James Wharton MP:

His majority was tiny (332) and he had made the news for being linked with a company that sells stone statues of giant penises.

What Malcolm had not fully appreciated was the full story of …

James and the Giant Peach Penis

The full story is courtesy of the Chronicle (Malcolm’s regular read in his first teaching post on Teesside), under the arresting title:

Stockton Tory MP’s bid to get cash for his pal
A NEW Tory MP tried to help a former Conservative colleague who sells giant penis statues get £30,000 in Government aid.

The credited author, Adrian Pearson, continues:

Stockton South MP James Wharton is facing criticism after he wrote to jobs quango One North East asking them to speed up a grant to Trocabart, a company run by his former Conservative party pal Jason Hadlow.

The newly elected MP asked spending chiefs to hand over £30,000 as “a priority” to his mate whose other company Simply Dutch was at the centre of a media storm earlier this year when police seized a four-foot tall sandstone statue of a penis following indecency complaints.

Mr Hadlow, a former chairman of Yarm’s Conservative Association and now an independent councillor, hopes to create dozens of jobs in Teesside by expanding the secondhand goods market. To help his business plans, Mr Hadlow asked One North East for a grant but soon hit a problem after the Conservative party nationally ordered the development agency to freeze business support.

As the cuts began to bite, Mr Wharton contacted One North East in June saying he had met with the firm and wanted to know why it hadn’t been given any cash yet. The MP had campaigned against the need for a jobs agency in the run up to the General Election. When spending chiefs explained to him that they were powerless to act because his own party had ordered a freeze, Mr Wharton took the issue to Parliament and asked written questions to the Department for Business in July to see when the grants would be freed up again.

Let’s get that straight:

• Our James had campaigned for one policy, and promptly (once elected) reversed his position.
• He was lobbying against a ConDem policy he had voted for in Parliament.
• He was doing so out of personal friendship and fellowship.
• He had the notion that a national policy could be reversed for his political and local ends.

Yes. We’ve got that. Sounds eminently … err … reasonably. Well, subjectively so.

… his former Conservative party pal Jason Hadlow

Malcolm knows when he is hearing a bit more than is said.

Jason Hadlow is a fifty-something (+/-) who was six years the perpetual mayor of that nice little, tight little town of Yarm.

• In October last year he announced his intention to resign his position.
• He walked out of a council meeting, and declared that any subsequent business was illegitimate.
• He had been involved (literally) in a spat with a fellow councillor (an elderly lady, Cllr Marjorie Simpson of the Yarm Independents, whom we shall meet later in this post). Hadlow said she had spat upon him and punched him. Despite his submission, the Police did not proceed with any charges.
• He had deliberately infringed the parking restrictions, as a way of challenging the regulations (this whole business — Yarm versus Stockton — cost Yarm some £70,ooo in legal costs).

Simply Dutch

That was the curious name of Mayor Hadlow’s store in Leeming Bar, North Yorkshire. Last year he suddenly closed it, sacked his staff, then as suddenly re-opened:

selling unusual furniture, homewares and antiques.

It was, apparently, all the fault of the weather. Simply Dutch seems also to operate via the Internet, with strong lines in replica guns, samurai swords and  “militaria” (as right).

That apart, let’s be honest: what do things “Dutch” imply in the lowest popular mind? Oak furniture (Mayor Hadlow’s version)? Or could it involve 200 hundred coffee shops — which are definitively not the same as cafés — in Amsterdam and their Bond van Cannabis Detaillisten (and there’s a clue)?

On that basis, what was HM Customs to believe when Mayor Hadlow imported a vast fibreglass dinosaur through the port of Hull? Right! They impounded it, and sent for the sniffer dogs, on the possibility that it might have “contents”.

Subsequently Simply Dutch went for the Big Time. A huge sandstone phallus, apparently one of 200 hundred made in Indonesia for which English gardens were in crying need, was put on public display in the shop window. Susceptible passers-by complained. The Police (spoilsports!) confiscated the object. A public order offence was issued: Mayor Hadlow was fined £80. He fomented a “Free Willy” campaign (Geddit?), and involved Janick Gers of heavy-metal rockers Iron Maiden,  a North-Easterner from Hartlepool, whose family home, coincidentally, is in Yarm.

Further back …

The earliest connection Malcolm sees between Hadlow and Wharton is in October 2007:

Following the local elections in May 2007, Yarm Town Council was made up of 9 Conservative councillor and 2 independents. Four months later James Earl resigned. The Local Government Acts 1972 states that once a resignation is received by the appropriate person, it takes effect immediately. Four days later James Earl withdrew his resignation.

The Council Chairman, (then-Conservative Councillor), Jason Hadlow, took the advice of a trainee solicitor, James Wharton, already the prospective Conservative candidate for Stockton South. At the subsequent Council meeting Hadlow first admitted he had read the letter (which made the resignation absolute and legal — that was also the advice of David Bond, the Director of Law and Democracy of Stockton Borough Council), then was advised by our trainee solicitor Wharton that he had not read the letter. So he hadn’t.

“Excellent”

It is remarkable, too, how often in Mr Wharton’s estimation Mayor Hadlow makes “an excellent speech”: not only at Yarm Fair (October 2009) but again at the lighting of the Christmas tree (December 2009). Was it the same speech? And then there are those repetitive mentions of Yarm’s excellent Conservative run Town Council and how Jason leads an excellent team of Town and Borough Councillors.

As to how many occasions Wharton spent some time discussing the issues facing Yarm with Town Council Chairman, Jason Hadlow, only Google may tell us.

♥ It must be love ♥

Not all are so taken.

Andrew Calcutt does a blog at newscompositor. He did a little skit on Clockwork Orange (where a giant penis is also a participant):

There was me and my three droogs, that is Dave, Georgie and Dim, and we sat in the Metrovia Milkbar trying to make up our rassodocks what to do about Europe. Dim, also known as Jim Whart, announces he’s up for a bit of the old in-out, in-out referendum on EU membership. Better to resolve the situation, he says. Release the pent-up frustration among grassroots activists so that afterwards we can focus on that which ordinary malchick- and devotchka-voters are worrying about all the time, namely ‘the cost of living’.

When he used that antiquated phrase – viddy well, oh my brothers, ‘the cost of living’ was last spoken of before there were even videos – the bile in me started to rise. I thought I could hear the blissful music of dear old Ludwig Van urging me to visit some actual ultra-violet upon Dim and his ilk; upon all the mad, swivel-eyed loons who populate the party with their outdated, provincial customs and embarrassing clothes.\

I looked across the table at Dim-Jim: still in his twenties and already the first signs of the-comb-over-to-come; veteran of the Officer Training Corps at Durham University where he studied law – making him the conservative conservatives’ conservative.  Why, oh my metrosexual brothers, is the party stuffed with such Dim antediluvians, dinosaurs who would stamp the life out of our ultra-modern, frictionless Westminster Village with their flat feet encased in socks and sandals? Watching his pudgy round face – surely the face of a boy who’s been carrying a briefcase since his first day at secondary school – I thought of the giant, model penis we had nicked from an artist’s house earlier that night, and I couldn’t stop thinking of ramming it right into him.

The latest thing

There is a delicious account, in — of all places — the Daily Star, of Hadlow’s more recent doings. It begins:

A MAYOR has quit after claiming he was assaulted, spat at and punched in town hall bust-ups with other councillors.

Tory Jason Hadlow alleged one of his political rivals turned up drunk for a town council meeting clutching a pint of cider, then chased him and another councillor out of the chamber.

The mayor said he has been sent poison pen letters and last May found posters all over his neighbourhood alleging he ran the town like former Chilean dictator General Pinochet, who tortured and killed political opponents.

Other posters appeared portraying the mayor of Yarm as Pinocchio – the Disney character famous for telling lies.

We are deep into Miss Marple territory here:

Last October Cleveland Police confirmed a man had been cautioned for sending poison pen letters to the mayor.

The notes had been sent to Mr Hadlow’s home, his ex-wife’s house and to Yarm Town Hall. He said he also received abusive fax messages, some calling him a “little shit and liar” and others saying “I hope you die”.

Welcome back an earlier acquaintance:

But the mayor’s rivals on the council claim the only person to turn up worse for wear from drink at meetings was him.

Councillor Marjorie Simpson said: “People who sit near him at meetings know he’s been drinking before he comes. He goes to the Black Bull. I’ve got a 100% attendance record at the council meetings and I’ve never seen the mayor or anyone else being chased out of the town hall.”

Let’s end at our beginning, with the ex-Mayor and his willy:

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”.

Last Rights

That was the week [*] that was,
It’s over so let it go.

 [*] Actually it’s been ten days — or an aching void of tooth-grinding boredom for anyone not committed to an asylum, the Daily Mail, the Times world-view, or the Tory Party. Though those four possibilities may merely be variations on a theme.

Anyway, let’s relish the unpaid viewing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INxp98-2i6A

No need to stick around beyond the first two minutes, unless one is a media-archaeologist. Just relish the delights of Millicent Martin at her devastating best.

Two final Malcolmian thoughts:

1. Pity the Goldthorpe counter-event didn’t get more coverage:

Britain mourned, the old banners were hoisted up in Goldthorpe and the miners went on the march.

At 2pm today, after waiting for a separate funeral in the South Yorkshire town to come to an end, an estimated 1000 former pit workers started a procession through the streets in protest at Baroness Thatcher.

An effigy of the former Prime Minister was placed in a coffin with the word ‘SCAB’ written in flowers on the side. It was then placed on a cart and towed by two horses towards the site of the former Goldthorpe colliary, which closed in 1994. A bagpiper led the way and the miners marched behind, some holding placards, most clutching cans of beer.

The entire town appeared to have turned out to join in the protest and chanted ”ere we go’ and ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, down, down, down’ as they walked. Banners from the original miners’ strike were waved on proud display.

“We have waited 28 years for this,” said David Fallon, a former hydraulics fitter at Goldthorpe colliery, who worked at the site for fifteen years and was wearing his former pit tie – complete with the white rose of Yorkshire.

All credit to the Daily Telegraph for that: a good deed in a naughty world. The intent was, presumably, to shock Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

What Disgusted will have missed is the whole event is not pure anger — though that would be well justified across the South Yorks coalfields. It’s more a first-class example of South (formerly West — don’t fret on it) Yorkshire humour. Just remember to wear a respectable association tie, with a white rose. Since Dear Old Dad originated just down the road from Goldthorpe,  Malcolm knows the mood well. It was likely a bloke from Goldthorpe or environs who addressed the Great Len Hutton, having scored a double century, with “Ah hopes ta see thee do better in t’ second innings.” Such a type is one who looks out of the window on 23rd June and observes how the evenings are drawing in.

2. Malcolm was touched by the dignitaries from the United States who made it all the way to St Paul’s:

Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn will lead a House delegation to Britain to attend the funeral of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on Wednesday.

Announced by House Speaker John Boehner’s office Monday, the trip marks a culmination of Republican accolades for Thatcher following her death last week. Thatcher’s conservative policies and close relationship with President Reagan won her widespread support within the GOP.

“Margaret Thatcher was one of the greatest champions freedom has ever known, and her funeral gives Americans and friends around the world an opportunity to pay final respects,” Boehner said in a statement.

The delegation also includes Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and George Holding (R-N.C.).

Yes: that truly is Michele Bachmann, [t]he only person dumber than Sarah Palin. As for Marsha Wedgeworth Blackburn, she is doubly distinguished —

• four times awarded 100% rating by the American Conservative Union: i.e. off the normal political spectrum, and impervious to reason. To be fair, she is now down to 87½% , and only the 40th most conservative member of the House as rated bt the National Journal.

and,

• because her election accounting is less than transparent, one of the Most Corrupt Members of Congress identified by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Malcolm explains his concern with such trivia because it gives cause for recalling Simon Hoggart’s Sketch of the occasion in today’s Guardian. It is juicily headed:

Politicians reassure themselves of their importance at Lady Thatcher’s funeral

No wonder Gordon Brown looked happy as the great and the good gathered to say farewell

It concludes with the pungent:

A scattering of celebrities, just on the right side of “who on Earth?” Jeremy Clarkson, Joan Collins, Jeffrey Archer, even Michael Fabricant MP, his lustrous hair-style topping for once dimmed by the dazzling lights of St Paul’s. And Alex Salmond, who acknowledges his gratitude; her decision to start the loathed poll tax in Scotland was a huge impetus towards the notion of national independence.

 A disappointing turnout from abroad, good in numbers if low in fame. But then this was about British politics rather than international diplomacy. From America, Henry Kissinger, Newt Gingrich – surely she would have found him deeply distasteful? – and former vice-president Dick Cheney, whose poor health over eight years meant, in Garry Trudeau’s words, that George W was “only a heartbeat from the presidency”. But neither Bush nor Clinton and no Carter. It was hard to ignore the niggle that she was, perhaps, more world famous in Britain than she was in the rest of the world.

Conclusion

Dave Brown is being properly recognised as a star political cartoonist — this for the Independent on Wednesday:

Road mental block

Last week the Lady in his Life and Malcolm drove the Great North Road from London to North Yorkshire: nothing particularly noteworthy about that.

It was a remarkably easy journey, both ways. No major road works. No minor (or major) upsets:

There was no wrecks and nobody drownded,
Fact, nothing to laugh at at all.

Except, for working days in mid-week, there seemed to be very sparse traffic. Certainly far less than the days of yore (well, since the John Major Memorial Motorway cleared the way from Alconbury to Peterborough).

Is it the economic downturn? The price of fuel? Have the English gone cool on their cars?

And then Malcolm hit on this:

To a non-expert, such as Malcolm, that is more than a puzzle. For the last decade, from even before the Slump (yes, c’mon: let’s use the word the history books will use!), it would seem that the number of cars on the roads has been remarkably stable.

Yet, consistently official expectations are of an imminent — and quite massive increase in the UK car population. And ministers continue to publish grandiose and expensive schemes for road improvements and new roads. For example:

Mr Osborne unveiled four major new road schemes, including an upgrade of sections of the A1, a new dual carriageway link road between the A5 and M1, widening a section of the A30 in Cornwall and improvements to the M25 motorway at the junction with the A13.

And there’s another billion quid of public money, to go with the other eight billion spent on new roads.

And, sure enough, here’s David Cameron — in his speech at Keighley this very day — bragging about it:

… in spite of all that we are having to do to deal with the deficit, we have invested more in major road schemes in each of the last two years than in any year of the last Parliament.

Now, let’s wonder whether the Department of Transport “experts” who so over-estimated car use, did equally badly by under-estimating public transport use. But that’s another story.

Rejoice! TINA’s back!

It jumps out of the screen (or, if you can find a full text, the page):

If there was another way I would take it. But there is no alternative.

Yes: David Cameron has tripped off to Keighley and made a speech, saying … well, absolutely nothing. Except that he is the current possessor of Ma Thatcher’s handbag, and is prepared to filch the odd trifle therefrom.

Except:

That’s from 1980, when the Tory government was already heading further and further into the slough of despond.

Consider this, from Anthony Wells’s ukpollingreport:

Thatcher’s key economic speech of 1o October 1980 was her  Conference “not for turning” address to the Tory faithful:

If our people feel that they are part of a great nation and they are prepared to will the means to keep it great, a great nation we shall be, and shall remain. So, what can stop us from achieving this? What then stands in our way? The prospect of another winter of discontent? I suppose it might.

But I prefer to believe that certain lessons have been learnt from experience, that we are coming, slowly, painfully, to an autumn of understanding. And I hope that it will be followed by a winter of common sense. If it is not, we shall not be—diverted from our course.

To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the “U” turn, I have only one thing to say. “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.”

“It’s déjà vu all over again”

And Yogi Berra is still with us (now in his later 80s).

The problem common to Thatcher in 1980, and Cameron in 2013 is: who is their audience?

It is, in short, their own party — and in both cases the speeches are defence mechanisms, self-defences against an increasingly unhappy and fractious parliamentary party. We need to recall that in 1980 Thatcher was not, by any means, the autocratic Tory leader that Galtieri, his Argie military cronies, and near on a thousand unnecessary corpses made her.

Cameron’s electoral problem

It isn’t just the Eastleigh business. The 1979 General Election meant that Thatcher’s Tory benches included 22 Scottish MPs (with 31.4% of Scottish votes) — Cameron has just the one (and 16.7% of the votes). In 1979 Northern Ireland returned five (of the ten in total) MPs as Ulster Unionists (with 36.6% of the poll) — on all matters economic, the UU MPs voted with the Tory Whip: today there is not a single Ulster Unionist MP remaining, despite Cameron’s explicit involvement and rebranding of UCUNF.

Let’s continue.

In September 2012 The Economist had a definitive description of:

The great divide
Economically, socially and politically, the north is becoming another country

The piece went still further back, and deeper into the socio-economics of English history:

The north remains poorer than the south, with sharply lower employment rates and average incomes. In 1965 men in the north were 16% more likely to die under the age of 75 than men in the south. By 2008 they were 20% more likely to, according to a study published last year in the British Medical Journal. This is not just because poor people die young: rich northerners apparently live shorter lives than their southern peers…

Whereas government spending is spread fairly evenly across the country — nurses and teachers are needed roughly in proportion to the population — private-sector growth has been heavily concentrated, mostly in and around London. Between 1997 and 2010 gross value-added, a measure of output, grew by 61% in the three northern regions. In London and the South East, it shot up by 92%. According to a study by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change at the University of Manchester, the state accounted, directly and indirectly, for 64% of the jobs created in the north between 1998 and 2007, against just 38% in the south.

It also considers the electoral impact:

The Conservative Party is retreating in the north, too. Its problem is not just that northern seats tend to be poorer, and thus more likely to vote Labour. Broad mistrust of the Tories, cemented during the 1980s recession, means middle-class voters in the north are actually more likely to vote Labour than are working-class voters in the south. Policy Exchange, a think-tank, points out that Conservatives held two-fifths of northern seats in 1951. They now hold less than a third, mostly in rural areas. In the cities, and in former-coal mining areas, the party is all but invisible. In July the Sheffield Conservative Party was forced to relocate to nearby Rotherham, as it is so short of cash…

And, of course, so much of what ConDem austerity economics has done disproportionately impacts upon the North and the devolved regions: the attacks on public employment, the squeeze on municipal budgets, replacing poor employment with even poorer-paid part-time work, lower productivity, rack-renting public housing, energy costs, transport costs … What, will the line stretch out to th’ crack of doom?

Cameron’s revolting women

This is the most jaw-dropping of the lot: women have turned against the Tories. In every post-War election until 2005 women voters preferred the Tories: it has been a declining gap (it was +12 in 1974), but in the last two general Elections, it has reversed. When one digs down into the most recent YouGov/Sunday Times poll, we find the gender gap is now a chasm:

Note that: a 12 point gender deficit for the Tories.

A curious beast

Peter Hoskin on ConHome finds only luke-warm words for Cameron’s speech (and it was an extended one) today, at Keighley:

David Cameron’s speech on the economy today is a curious beast. Here we have the Prime Minister pronouncing on growth, competition, debt and all that – but it has a thin flavour to it, as though it’s just an appetiser for the Budget in a couple of weeks. There are no new policy announcements, nor anything we haven’t really heard before. Yet perhaps that is the point: Mr Cameron emphasises, à la Lady Thatcher, that “there is no alternative” to the Coalition’s current plan. He speaks of consistency and continuity. It reads like a message telling everyone – from the restless Tory backbenches to Ed Balls and Vince Cable – not to expect a change in course.

That addresses the “what” of the speech (or, perhaps the “what-not?”), but not the more telling “where” (Keighley!)  and “why?” (because he’s dans le merde!). On the other hand, that’s precisely what Nick Robinson has caught on (and saying far more succinctly and elegantly than Malcolm managed here):

Perhaps most revealing, though, is that he feels the need to make this speech at all and who it is aimed at. It is a restatement of the government’s central economic purpose aimed at:

• his own party, which is why he is borrowing Margaret Thatcher’s language
• the North of England
• and women

Look at this paragraph to see what I mean :

“I know things are tough right now. Families are struggling with the bills at the end of the month. Some are just a pay-cheque away from going into the red. Parents are worried about what the future holds for their children. Whole towns are wondering where their economic future lies. And I know that is especially true for people here in Yorkshire and in many parts of the north of our country who didn’t benefit properly from the so-called boom years and worry they won’t do so again. But I’m here to say that’s not going to happen. Because we have a plan to get through these difficulties – and to get through them together.”

A man! A plan! A canal! Panama!

As good a palindrome as you’ll get in these parts to remind us just how much of British politicking involves going round in circles and disappeared up one’s own … canal.

Divided loyalties: being Hiberno-English

A long while since (5th September 2008, since you didn’t ask), Malcolm put up a post on being Anglo-Irish. For some reason, that still attracts a fair number of “hits”. This, then, may be the logical  counter-part.

J’ai deux amours

Josephine Baker famously had two loves:

J’ai deux amours
Mon pays et Paris.

If Freda McDonald — barely two generations from slavery — had a hard life, growing up in St Louis, she found fame, fortune and a distinguished personal history as Josephine Baker in her adopted France.

Therein lies the rub

In this 21st century, many of us have two identities: one on the birth certificate, and one in the life we live. There’s little particularly “new” in this:

• Arthur Wellesley got himself born in what is now the Merrion Hotel, Dublin — but is the archetypal English Iron Duke;
• David Lloyd-George arrived in the world in the Manchester suburbs, but is forever “the Welsh Wizard”;
• Éamon de Valera originated in New York, but re-made an Ireland in his own image;

— and so on.

Malcolm’s eldest has a surfeit of air-miles and is quadri-lingual in English and American, Tottenham and Noo Joisey. Even daughter number 2, the Earth Mother, manages to switch effortlessly between south Saxon RP and narrow-vowelled Anglian North Yorkshire.

Your nationalism quiz

Yesterday’s

Times

,

at its fullest fluffy Murdochian populism, was rattling on:

A new version of the Life in the United Kingdom handbook, published yesterday, aims to prepare would-be Britons for the citizenship test. The guide focuses on history, tradition and what it means to be British and has ditched more mundane sections on the practicalities of life in the UK …

The 180-page guide, costing £12.99 is unashamedly patriotic, with a red, white and blue cover and pictures of the Queen and of crowds waving the Union flag at the Last Night of the Proms and on the Mall. Sir Winston Churchill is pictured alongside quotes from his wartime speeches but only two post-war prime ministers receive separate biographies: Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher.

The new edition finds a place for Monty Python, Morcambe and Wise and Torvill and Dean, but migrants will also be expected to know about important figures of English literature including Sir Kingsley Amis, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and J.K.Rowling.

Pass the sick-bag, Alice.

On the other hand, the side-bar was a Commentary by Matthew Syed, and it went a way to re-entering normality. Syed refers back to background:

My father arrived on these shores in 1966 as a Muslim, Pakistani, and harbouring deep suspicions about British cultural assumptions. Almost half a century later, he is a monarchist, Radio 4 aficionado and just about the most patriotic Brit I know. With the exception of his Christianity, to which he converted, Britishness is perhaps the most important and cherished affiliation of his life.

My maternal grandfather, who died last week at 98, lived a very different life to my father. Born in the Rhondda Valley at the outset of the Great War, he worked down the pits from 14 then spent a lifetime serving others, first at a home for deprived children and then as warden of an old people’s home. the one thing he shared with dad was a deep love of nation, but he interpreted Britishness in a fundamentally different way.

Not deep. Not philosophical. But neither, reading between the lines of that Times piece, is Life in the United Kingdom [£12.99 at all good bookshops, or around £7.99 if you're Brit enough to order on-line — a nationality test in itself]. Syed scores by being domestic, humane, direct, down to earth — even dignified, in the best sense. All the good things the official line seems to miss.

For an example, today’s Clare in the Community (Harry Venning’s unfailingly reliable weekly cartoon for the Guardian‘s Society section) is an instant education in ‘Britishness’, and — unlike the nostrums in Life in the United Kingdom — transcends the regional cultural divides that Syed glosses in that final phrase above:

What are little boys made of?

Everyone differs: we are an unregimented, frequently-bolshie and mutually-incompatible lot, each with our peculiar passions. What is it that makes Malcolm’s academic and professorial Little Brother traipse out fortnightly to stand with perhaps 5,000 other stalwarts and watch Notts County? The heterogeneousness is an essential part of belonging anywhere on this archipelago.

Unlike Syed, Malcolm was denied personal knowledge of either of his grandfathers: one tends his plot eternally in Doullens Communal Cemetery Extension No. 2; the other died of miner’s lung around the time the (first) Great Slump arrived. Did either of those have a deep love of nation, an overwhelming sense of being “British”?

As for the royalist thing, Malcolm recalls (and can date) 15th February, 1952. He doesn’t remember the funeral of George VI — apart from the oddest early-adopter, television hadn’t penetrated north Norfolk. He does know it was a day of national mourning, and so a Friday off school. Dear Old Dad spent much of the day double-digging the long vegetable garden, and none too chuffed. When pre-adolescent Malcolm murmured a triteness about it being “Sad about the King”, the parental snort was followed by “Why, what did he ever do for me?”

Was that the germ of a young republican?

Two loves? Well, two affections.

For Malcolm neither north Norfolk nor dirty Dublin quite amount to “‘loves”. The former has changed, not wholly for the better, over the years as the have-yotties and weekenders made the coast a transplant of Camden Town — Hampstead-by-the-Sea is further south, at Southwold. Dublin has changed even more, though there remain vestiges of the old scruffiness. West Cork has gone the way of the gentrified English coast. Once away from the “gold coast”, the rest of County Down is not wholly spoiled — but could one transplant and enjoy living there?

Despite all the confusions, that double pull recurs and endures. After all, when GCE English History and English Literature immediately leads into the Irish Leaving Certificate, a cultural trauma persists for life.

Par eux toujours,
Mon coeur est ravi.

What the eye doesn’t see …

About semi-annually an incoming Transport Minister, anxious to make a PR hit at minimal cost and effort, republishes a circular. The document urges local councils to cut back on the street clutter that befouls most streets, junctions and even beauty spots.

The classic example is the warning of aircraft noise, under the Heathrow fly-path. With 1200 or 1300 aircraft in-and-out each day, near roof-top height over Hounslow, with the prevailing wind wafting the pungency of jetfuel, a metal warning of the obvious is just another intrusion into decency.

One of the last occasions Malcolm went to Heathrow, he reckoned the road signage, warnings, prohibitions and indicators — road-side and on the carriageway — aggregated at one to every dozen-to-fifteen yards. So, at thirty miles an hour (and much of the way the speed limit is higher than that), the driver has to take note of them at the rate of more than one a second — as well as watching the traffic. This way insanity lies.

Officialdom gives four main reasons for the latest utterance:

1. Improving the streetscape by identifying and removing unnecessary, damaged and worn-out signs;
2. Helping to ensure signs are provided only where they are needed;
3. Minimising the environmental impact, particularly in rural settings;
4. Reducing costs, not just of the signs themselves but maintenance and energy costs.

The only one of those that needs to be propounded is the third: environmental impact (in other words, gross eye-sores, defacing the streetscape and the landscape). The other three are either self-evident or even (especially with the first one) hazards.

Now let’s take an example: not from a main London highway, but from a quiet Nidderdale village (one pub, one shop, one bus an hour — none on Sundays) just outside the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Once upon a time:

And, a similar view today:

There are now seven metal signs, where once a single, simple (and very “English”) wooden fingerpost sufficed.

When constabulary duty’s to be done, to be done …

… A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, happy one.

— William Schwenck Gilbert for The Pirates of Penzance.

• The picture (right) is the baritone Walter Passmore of the original production.
• The song was a favourite among London coppers, at least down to the mid-twentieth century. Malcolm heard it from his own (ex-PC) father’s lips.

Now that the dust settles on the dismal Plebgate business, now that Andrew Mitchell, a former UN peacemaker,  can polish his bike in peace, there’s still the odd bit of gristle to be chewed.

As we saw in yesterday’s Sindy, John Rentoul has come over all fair-minded:

I thought Cameron made a mistake in not insisting that Mitchell step down straight away. Which is not the same as saying that I thought Mitchell deserved to resign. Indeed, I thought he was more sinned against than sinning. Being told that it is “policy” to wheel your bicycle through the pedestrian gate is monstrous anti-cyclist discrimination (and jobsworthism of the highest order). Losing your temper and swearing at a police officer is a sin, obviously, but it may not be a crime. The Court of Appeal quashed a conviction last year, ruling that police officers are used to hearing the f-word, which is “rather commonplace”, and that it was unlikely to cause them “harassment, alarm or distress”. It was the police who, in breach of their rules, gave the story to The Sun.

OK … yawn … let’s move on …

Well, perhaps not. Put aside the “rather commonplace” adverbial reinforcer, and what are we still left with?

So, let’s play it again:

“You guys are supposed to [ … ] help us.”

Consider who are “you” and who are “us”

“You” are, most immediately, the security at the Downing Street gates. In Mitchell’s mind they are there mainly to open the main gates to let him pass through: that is the beginning and end of this little demonstration of why we’re “not all in this together”.

The police officers see their role a trifle differently, indeed from a more elevated level. They are there to keep the peace, to maintain security, and to protect the entire citizenry, who may include elected politicians.

Beyond the immediate police detachment, Mitchell may be claiming ownership and the dedicated aid and assistance of the entire Metropolitan Police, and by further extension of the police service nationally. At which, Malcolm mutters, “Up to a point, Lord Copper.“

We have been here before

Just how far political (i.e. Thatcherite) intervention went in the aftermath of the Hillsborough tragedy may be just about arguable. We do know that Thatcher herself was closeted with South Yorkshire police chief a day or so before 164 police statements were re-written to fit the “official” script.

And now:

A Nottinghamshire MP is to call for an inquiry into alleged manipulation of evidence by South Yorkshire Police during the miners’ strike.

John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw, said claims made in a BBC Inside Out programme relating to the so-called Battle of Orgreave must be examined.

The claims, that junior officers were told what to write in their statements, were “very convincing”, said Mr Mann.

South Yorkshire Police said it would consider whether a review was needed.

What we know is that the cases against arrested miners were built on false evidence, as after Hillsborough:

… a barrister specialising in criminal trials, Mark George QC, analysed 40 police officers’ Orgreave statements, and found that many contained identical descriptions of alleged disorder by the miners. To prove the offence of riot, the prosecution has to establish a scene of general disorder within which a defendant committed a particular act, for example throwing a stone, which would otherwise carry a much lesser charge.

George found that 34 officers’ statements, supposed to have been compiled separately, used the identical phrase: “Periodically there was missile throwing from the back of the pickets.”

One paragraph, of four full sentences, was identical word for word in 22 separate statements. It described an alleged charge by miners, including the phrase: “There was however a continual barrage of missiles.”

Michael Mansfield QC, who defended three of the acquitted miners, described South Yorkshire police’s evidence then as “the biggest frame-up ever”.

One case, against Bryan Moreland, spectacularly collapsed when a Home Office graphologist went on oath to declare the police officer’s signature was a fabrication. Moreover:

[Chief Constable] Wright did not accept any fault at all in the Orgreave operation and prosecutions. But he acknowledged unapologetically that there was a deliberate effort to convict miners of riot and unlawful assembly, which carried potentially long, even life, prison sentences. In a report to the police committee dated 25 September 1985, Wright set out the details of the operation to deal, he said, with escalating violence in picketing at the Orgreave coking plant, which miners have always argued was exaggerated.

“The chief constable decided that the usual charge of disorderly conduct, contrary to the Public Order Act, was inadequate and that, where appropriate, charges of unlawful assembly and riot should be preferred,” Wright wrote in his report.

We’ll be back to continue that in a moment. So far, the bottom line seems to be: in Thatcher’s day, the police — at least those of the South Yorkshire force — were  supposed to [ … ] help us. We have that on the authority of the Baroness herself:

There are those who are using violence and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it. They are failing because of two things.

First, because of the magnificent police force well trained for carrying out their duties bravely and impartially (loud cheers).

And secondly, because the overwhelming majority of people in this country are honourable, decent and law abiding and want the law to be upheld and will not be intimidated, and I pay tribute to the courage of those who have gone into work through these picket lines, to the courage of those at Ravenscraig and Scunthorpe for not going to be intimidated out of their jobs and out of their future. Ladies and Gentlemen we need the support of everyone in this battle which goes to the very heart of our society. The rule of law must prevail over the rule of the mob.

Which should all be read with implicit and emphatic first-person pronouns: My impartiality. My police. My intimidation. My law. My rules. To get her cheering audience, Thatcher had to make that speech at Banbury Cattle Market, in one of the safest Tory seats in the country.

Any blame for all this politicising of the police goes right (far right) to the top. The poor bloody constabulary were told, even ordered to submit their notebooks for editing by Chekisty and commissars. That is no obscene exaggeration: it was the way things were done in South Yorkshire under Chief Constable Wright (and so we continue from that earlier quotation):

He set up a dedicated unit to target the miners: “A chief superintendent well experienced in CID work was appointed and directed by the chief constable to organise the collection and collation of evidence, and the preparation of prosecution files whenever the scale and nature of events at Orgreave so required.”

On 18 June 1984, the day of the most notorious confrontation, when police were filmed attacking miners then claimed they were attacked first, Wright recorded: “The evidence-gathering team comprised one detective inspector, one detective sergeant, and four detective constables.” It has never been revealed who these officers or the more senior commanding officers were, nor if any were then involved in what has been labelled the black propaganda unit which conducted the campaign to falsely blame the Liverpool supporters for the Hillsborough disaster.

For the record, at that time young Andrew Mitchell was girding his loins and polishing his bicycle clips to become a devoutly Thatcherite Tory MP for the Gedling constituency of Greater Nottingham, not a million miles from the core territory of the strike-breakers.

And now for “us”

If  ’You guys are supposed to [ … ] help us’, let us consider the precise definition of us in this context.

At first sight it might be the us of the government. Yet that doesn’t quite comprehend Mitchell’s position. After all, the Chief Whip  is the one senior occupant of Downing Street who is there primarily as the Gauleiter of the majority parliamentary party. Cue wikipedia:

In British politics, the Chief Whip of the governing party in the House of Commons is usually appointed as Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury so that the incumbent, who represents the whips in general, has a seat and a voice in the Cabinet. By virtue of holding the office of Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, the Government Chief Whip has an official residence at 12 Downing Street. However, the Chief Whip’s office is currently located at 9 Downing Street.

To be clear, we do not have a ‘governing party’ in this parliament. We are saddled with a coalition. There are two Deputy Chief Whips, of whom one is Alistair Carmichael of the LibDems, who does not have bicycling access to Downing Street. When the Chief Whip speaks in the Commons (and, by tradition, such occasions are few and far between), it is specifically in a party-political context.

So Chief Whip Mitchell (as was) was a Conservative Party official demanding obedience from his subservient lesser-beings. Whether the term he used was “plebs” or “plods”, he was claiming l’état, c’est moi.

That is far, far more damaging than any fucking adverb.

A chapter of “accidents”?

They were a group of lads (all of Malcolm’s vintage), working out of RAF Wittering . That was the base for ground-attack aircraft (duck as you raced up that bit of the A1!) — hence ‘Hedgehoppers’. Because they were military, they had to be “Anonymous”. And, also hence: Hedgehoppers Anonymous:

And they were good. Far, far better than many of the catch-penny beat groups that “made it” longer.

Indelible

For those of a certain age, of a certain disposition, that lyric stays imprinted:

It’s good news week:
Someone’s dropped a bomb somewhere,
Contaminating atmosphere,
And blackening the sky.

It’s good news week:
Someone’s found a way to give
The rotting dead a will to live,
Go on and never die.

If the first stanza/verse explains why these guys were out-of-kilter with the 1960s RAF, the next one remains omni-present.

Take the last few hours

The Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell story has been one that kept giving for the Labour opposition. There will be broken hearts among the Labour Party tendency that Mitchell finally went for the political equivalent of a Darwin Award:

The prime tenet of the Darwin Awards is that we are celebrating the self-removal of incompetent genetic material from the human race. Therefore, the potential winner must be deceased, or at least incapable of reproducing. The traditional method is death. However, an occasional rebel opts for sterilization, which allows her more time to enjoy the dubious notoriety of winning a Darwin Award.

The bitter-sweet joy is that it took Mitchell this long: a month of poisonous news-stories, which will not have finished with his resignation. The other barrel is loaded with his last-minute as International Development Secretary decision to award £16 million to President Kagame of Rwanda (The rotting dead a will to live):

Downing Street approved the controversial decision last month by the then international development secretary Andrew Mitchell to restore British aid to Rwanda in spite of fears about the human rights record of the president, Paul Kagame.

As Mitchell faces criticism over his decision to grant £16m in aid on his last day in office, it emerged that the move was backed jointly by No 10 and the Foreign Office (FCO). Hours after his decision last month Mitchell took up the post of government chief whip.

What remains inexplicable is the double standard whereby

• President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir  of Sudan  was indicted by the International Criminal Court,

while

• Kagame travels the world scot-free,  unindicted and, by the UK government, well-rewarded (at least until the next discreet volte-face).

But then David Cameron has been well-serviced (not least courtesy of Andrew Mitchell) with juicy photo-ops and news-clips in Rwanda.

Credit where it’s due

As Mitchell departs, Sir George Young is slotted, seamlessly, into his place.

Sir George Samuel Knatchbull Young, 6th Baronet, has been around the block somewhat. He did well enough under John Major (as Financial Secretary and then Transport Secretary) but was one of the decent, unpushy Tories who seemed to miss out when the ConDem coalition was formed. He was Leader of the House (surely the one job for which he was made)  until, as it seemed, he was made redundant in the Great Cameron Re-shuffle — to provide a fig-leaf for the defenestrated Health Secretary, Lansley.

Now he is back; a gentleman to the marrow. Where ‘Thrasher’ Mitchell was supposed to intimidate, the Bicycling Baronet will charm. Where Mitchell swore, Young will soothe. True noblesse oblige.

For once it is an inspired choice.

But we haven’t finished with the rotting dead

Just when Mitchell was going for the seppuku solution, “Gids” Osborne was rubbing in the message of We’re not all in this together:

George Osborne is reported to have stumped up an extra £160 for a first class train ticket after being told he could not sit in the restricted area with his standard class fare.

ITV News correspondent Rachel Townsend said she was travelling on a train to Euston when the chancellor got on at Wilmslow, in his Tatton constituency, and tried to get away without paying the extra charge.

Townsend made perfect use of Twitter to report that journey under the hashtag#getGeorgeinstandard, as an aide to the chancellor reportedly tried to persuade the conductor to let her boss stay in first class away from, for want of a better word, the plebs.

What goes missing there is the female “aide”, who apparently had to sort out the penalty fare (as well as her own?). This from the BBC:

The story was broken via a series of tweets by ITV reporter Rachel Townsend, who works for Granada Reports in the North-West of England.

She said: “Very interesting train journey to Euston Chancellor George Osborne just got on at Wilmslow with a STANDARD ticket and he has sat in FIRST CLASS…

“His aide tells ticket collector he cannot possibly move and sit with the likes of us in standard class and requests he is allowed to remain in First Class.

Malcolm’s emphasis: there are indeed some to whom privilege comes unnaturally natural.

Tin-foil hats at the ready!

Feel free to go all conspiracy-theory at Huffington Post:

Ummm … decisions! decisions!

Underneath the arches

Osborne was hurried, shielded, escorted out of the side, goods, entrance of Euston Station to avoid the welcoming party of assembled press vultures and a few Labourites. Should “Gids” Osborne think he is out from under, he should reflect on a fellow traveller who also tried to take the easy way through.

Further north, there’s  York’s historic Micklegate Bar, one of the four medieval entrances through the ancient city walls. Anyone who has been to York will recognise it as the gate near the railway station, where the A59 from Harrogate and Knaresborough joins the A1036 road from Tadcaster. Most likely the Roman legions, hiking up Ermine Street, came this way. The present Micklegate (from Northumbrian Anglian micil: great or large in size, bulk, or stature — there may be a clue there) has been in situ these seven hundred and odd years. Ignorant modernists find it clearly prefaced with a height warning: 8ft 6in. Even so, this afternoon a delivery lorry attempted the impossible.

God luck to both the lorry driver and “Gids”, as they talk their separate ways out of their present embarrassments.

And the latest from London …

The broadsheet columnists whistle a certain hit from the 60′s as they conceive appropriate stories for the weekend editions.

Something missing

Anyone watching the Commons doings today should have noticed a missing name, and a quickly-finessed problem.

The second item, the problem, was voiced by Jim Pickard on the Financial Times Westminster Blog:

Whether by design or by chance, (probably the latter), the one issue David Cameron would prefer not to talk about today will have slipped many people’s minds by the time of the evening headlines: Britain’s debt mountain…

Somewhere along the way, the main focus was lost: is the austerity drive for nought and will it be abandoned, or partially abandoned, in the autumn?

The key moment could be when the independent Office for Budget Responsibility issues new forecasts, when it will say whether chancellor George Osborne is likely to hit his debt target.

That is when the chancellor might have to make the biggest decision yet of his time in power: whether to make further spending cuts or cast his targets to the four winds.

In other words, “a good day to bury bad news”.

And the bad news was predictable, but horrendous.

The name missing in all the revelations and debate on the Hillsborough disaster  is “Thatcher”. This could be, in popular terms, the more explosive.

Consider Brian Reade in the Mirror, a year since:

A few years ago I asked Trevor Hicks [of the Hillsborough Family Support Group] if he thought he’d ever establish the truth about why he lost his two beautiful teenage daughters that day.

He told me he already had. He was in no doubt that they died through police incompetence, inadequate safety procedures, a non-existant emergency service response and a culture that had allowed society to view all football fans as dangerous scum and stick them in metal cages.

He sought another truth. Why the Establishment had wriggled out of all blame, smeared the fans as killers, lied about their actions and refused to take any responsibility for the deaths, thus denying the deceased justice and the bereaved closure.

And he said if he could be granted one wish before he died it would be to find out what was said between Margaret Thatcher and police chiefs when she visited the Leppings Lane terrace the day after the disaster.

Because someone in high places had told him that Thatcher decided it was imperative that the police were exonerated. That the consequences for a force she treated almost as her private army, would be immense if (as Lord Justice Taylor’s report later demanded) they took the rap for 96 deaths in their care.

And so the cover-up began with her press adviser Bernard Ingham briefing the media that the disaster had been caused by a “tanked-up mob”.

Three days later the Thatcher-supporting Sun’s infamous front-page about fans urinating on the dead and stealing from their pockets appeared after collusion between the Police Federation and a Tory MP. The story went round the world that drunken fans killed their own. And the truth was buried.

What Cameron admitted in the Commons today was that every aspect of that interpretation has been proven correct — except that the directive for the cover-up came from the top, from Westminster, from Downing Street, from Thatcher.

Who carries the can for the deceit and the cover-up?

Was all the deceit spawned by South Yorkshire Police? Or did it come, in whole or in part, from Thatcher and her inner circle?

What we know is that Thatcher went visiting Hillsborough on the Sunday. It was only on the Monday that the South Yorkshire Police “weeded” the individual policemen’s reports:

“It is evident from the disclosed documents that from the outset SYP sought to establish a case emphasising exceptional levels of drunkenness and aggression among Liverpool fans, alleging that many arrived at the stadium late, without tickets and determined to force entry.

“Eight years after the disaster it was revealed publicly for the first time that statements made by SYP officers were initially handwritten as ‘recollections’, then subjected to a process of ‘review and alteration’ involving SYP solicitors and a team of SYP officers.

“Some 116 of the 164 statements identified for substantive amendment were amended to remove or alter comments unfavourable to SYP.”

 Consider one last piece of “evidence”, again and today from the Mirror, reading Cameron’s lips:

Mr Cameron said that the Hillsborough families were “right” in their belief that some of the authorities “attempted to create a completely unjust account of events that sought to blame the fans for what happened”.

But he said that the report had found “no evidence of any government trying to conceal the truth”.

Mr Cameron said: “At the time of the Taylor Report the then prime minister (Margaret Thatcher) was briefed by her private secretary that the defensive and  — I quote — ‘close to deceitful’ behaviour of senior South Yorkshire officers was ‘depressingly familiar’.

In other words, even if Thatcher was deceived, it was because she wanted to be so.

Which is no exculpation.