The burden of ConDem-nation

Once upon a time a LibDem fretted about paving stones and similar parochial issues. That was Ms Featherstone’s wont before she was enstooled as MP for Hornsey and Wood Green.

Time passes: she has now risen to the Olympian foothills as a PuS.

As many have found before, this empowers not a jot, but acts as a silencer. As a result, it is difficult, if not impossible, to express views which would not offend the higher deities. The awful example of David Willetts (and he an attender at the divine higher council) this very Sunday must be a constant reminder. Speak out of turn: get sliced off at the knees.

Now, Ms Featherstone’s local rag, the Ham & High, has awarded her a regular column, in rotation with the other local MPs. Her last effort was a waffle about the burdens of office. In Malcolm’s view, it had absolutely no relevance to her constituency duties.

This provoked a froth-splattered invective to the editor of the Ham & High:

Well, we cynics have always noted where the political bias lay.

That said, 66 column centimeters of unpaid editorial being granted to Ms Featherstone for a ConDem party political, with no obvious local reference, is a trifle OTT, don’t you think?

In due course, a decent reply came forth:

Hello Malcolm – are you referring to the column on page 17? It usually appears on page 18 and rotates between politicians of various hues.

Across our editions we have regular slots, among others, made available to Glenda Jackson (Labour) Mark Field (Cons) Karen Buck (Cons) and  Lynne Feathersone (Lib Dems). They all have one thing in common – they are sitting MPs and the columns give them an opportunity to address constituents.

There the matter would have rested had Malcolm not been elsewhere for a few days, and looked at the local newspaper there. Which provoked this:

You are correct on one point: “the columns give them [M.P.s] an opportunity to address constituents”. Invariably that is what they should do: address constituents on constituency affairs.

So far, so predictable, as was your response: so much so that it needed a prompt (see next paragraph) to recover it from the Trash.

I have just read an admirable example of the genre by Andrew  Jones, MP, for the Harrogate Advertiser. In his allotted space, he manages to hat-tip four towns in his patch, reflect on two local issues (closure of an agency dealing with problems of addiction, and a mental health day centre), and report back on one of his main campaign issues (improved rail links).

Unlike the column to which I still take offence.

Now, it has to be noted it takes a lot for Malcolm favourably to acknowledge any Tory.

To his credit, Geoff Martin of the Ham & High is a true mensch. He had a further response:

your point about the content of the article is a reasonable one to make but that’s more a reflection on the politician’s priorities than it is on the newspaper. And I don’t think our readers are disinterested in someone’s view of, or insight into, the bigger picture. I think they are intelligent enough to judge any article on its own merits.

Which is a wholly honourable position. Except:

Does that mean the Ham & High has no editorial control over the content? In which case, should that not be made explicit?

“Lynne Featherstone joins fight for toilets”

– yet another of the less-euphonious gems in Broadway, the Muswell Hill edition of the Ham & High. Curiously, this pressing issue does not seem to merit a parallel existence in the Web edition.

However, the paper’s ever-ready need for a miscue is amply illustrated on-line by the headline story:

Breaking news: Dramatic bank raid in Crouch End Broadway.

Why, in passing, are all such occasions “dramatic”?

Back to the print edition, when we turn to page 10, as invited by that teaser above, we find this one:

‘Public pressure’ leads to pilot toilet scheme.

Just as well the sub-editor, desperate for the alliteration,  recognised the need for that first letter “L”.

In the subsequent three column piece, there are several quotes from locals. Of the promised Ms Featherhead, however, nary a mention. The lady’s statutory appearance in the Weekly Lynn follows the reasonable, if slightly unpunctuated and grammatically-distressed, headline:

So MP, what is it you exactly do?

Malcolm used to spend hours with third-formers, scouring the collected works of that good socialist Alan Durband, for guidance on positioning adverbs such as “only” in sentences. Those warnings of potential danger obviously eluded the sub-editor, who couldn’t cope here with that “exactly”.

What does emerge is Ms Featherhead’s enormous sense of her personal mystique and grandeur:

“People like to have a figure head in the community who turns up to events and gives them significance,” she said. “Part of my role is being visible in the community.

So, remember: your event is not “significant” until it is graced by the lady herself.

As for “the rumblings and noises off about the toilet issue” (to borrow from Malcolm’s memory of a linguistically-challenged headteacher addressing his staff meeting):

Someone, somewhere must be desperate.

One more heave

All over the BritPolitBlogosphere there have been recent rumblings. These noises off may be either or both:

• reactions to the nonsense from Sky about the “most fanciable MP”;
• acid reflux in disgust at the context and the chosen ten.

The inclusion of one body rankles: Lynn Featherstone, the low-rent Penelope Pitstop of North London politics. She is mainly celebrated for her self-celebrity and her last-minute £11,000 raid on the Commons stationery-cupboard.

This is the lady who, days after being elected, waxed lyrical to the local Press that she had been left in charge of the LibDim Treasury response to the Budget. Not. One looks in vain for any contribution from her to the Debate.

Then, when the LibDim leadership became vacant, she again had an announcement: despite approaches, she was not herself a candidate. One searches for a second LibDem MP, however LibDim, who thought she might conceivably qualify. In one possessed of the usual number of brain-cells, it might all be construed as self-mockery. That, however, severely over-rates Our Lass.

Then she was “running”, yet again, a leadership-contender’s campaign. Result: abject failure.

Ms Featherstone has made hardly a smudge-mark on being a Parliamentary presence. Her talents have been rewarded with a place as “youth and equality spokesperson” in Nick Clegg’s gang of everyone: she is listed 71st out of 77 names in the Liberal Democrat Shadow Ministerial Team. Let it be recalled that there are just 62 LibDem MPs.

So what is her “attraction”?

Well, for a start, one could adapt Mrs Merton’s famous question to Debbie McGee: “What first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”

In which context, North London has a down-home version of a political feud. Peter Forrest, the Dick Dastardly of this piece, Mr Perpetual Tory Candidate and hardly scratching along himself, repeatedly and repetitively (in letters columns and anonymously on the Web) points out that Ms Featherstone:

is a multi-million heiress with family money coming from the Ryness chain of hardware and electrical shops.

Malcolm finds a warm cockle in his heart to applaud Mr Forrest in his solo-pursuit. It is a domestic version of one of those epics from the past, the National Theatre of Brent re-enacting that celebrated exchange:

Herbie Morrison (twittering): Nye [Bevan]‘s problem is he’s his own worst enemy.

Ernie Bevin (harrumphing): Not while I’m alive he’s not.

Some of the Featherstone lucre went to finance her heavy self-promotion and self-inflation. This filled recycle bins across the Hornsey and Wood Green Constituency in the long months before the last General Election. Things have gone quieter since, though another outbreak occurred in the non-Election frenzy of last autumn.

Her cult-of-personality is of heroic, Stalinist proportions. Malcolm was so exercised by this freakish narcissism that he counted, in one four page tabloid throw-away, the name “Lynn Featherstone” appearing some half-dozen times more than that of “Jesus Christ” in the entire Four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles put together.

Malcolm could never bring himself to vote LibDem (for him, it is the political equivalent of trying to get squiffy on alcohol-free Lambrusco). However, he has feelings for those who do: they surely deserve someone better than Ms Featherhead.