It is difficult to think of anything more depressing than the recent photographs of a smirking Lord Mandy in his ermine drag flanked by two of yesterday’s major groupies, Lord Falconer and Baroness Jay, she who gleefully masterminded the removal of the hereditary peers, but couldn’t resist a title for herself. At the very moment the PM was berating the bonus culture, his new friend, Lord Mandy, was looking forward to trousering some serious dosh from Brussels, and senior executives of our self-congratulatory, ratings-obsessed BBC were awarding themselves £318,000 extra for doing nothing discernibly advantageous for the licence payers. A gravy train still leaves every hour for the fortunate few. Meanwhile not a hint of mea culpa from our blessed Prudence of the Manse and New/Old Labour is still peopled with the offspring of that pretty straight sort of guy who courted the very wealthy and in return gave us the Dome, all-night binge-drinking, Alastair Campbell, Ken Livingstone, the death of Dr Kelly, two wars and a lethal decline in our civil liberties.
I have recently been reading a book which I commend to anybody who still cares about our soon-to-be-bankrupt country — The Bumper Book of Government Waste 2008, published by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, which could have been sub-titled How We Are Continuously Being Taken to the Cleaners. It lists in sickening detail how the many indigenous porkers running our lives have their noses firmly in the trough. When the going is tough for most of us, how uplifting it is to know that Margaret Beckett was able to claim £52,000 for new kitchen cabinets, £46 million was the cost of ‘supporting the Prime Minister’ and £95 million was spent on ‘supporting the Cabinet’. From the sublime to the ridiculous, the Forestry Commission offered £30,000 a year for the post of Diversity Chief to tackle the shortage of homosexual lumberjacks, suggesting a Monty Python sketch crossed with a new CD from the Village People. Who are the civil servants who think up such non-jobs? Shouldn’t we have a right under the Freedom of Information Act to know? They could be named and shamed like paedophiles, for they cook up endless non-jobs advertised in acres of Guardian newsprint devoted to overpaid public appointments that do nothing for the betterment of mankind.
We should also put aside sombre thoughts of our coming winter fuel bills and ponder the fact that £174 million has so far been spent on the inconclusive Bloody Sunday inquiry, while those responsible for the Omagh murders are still at liberty. Equally, while Sir Ian Blair calculates the amount of his retirement pension, give some thought to the expenditure of £200,000 of our money on an eight-month study of alleged cocaine abuse by celebrity supermodels that has not resulted in any charges being brought. You and I get hammered for overstaying five minutes in a parking bay, yet have to stomach pop stars known to be serial Category A drug users getting away with it time and time again.
A packed gravy train of overpaid media personnel departs every day from Television Centre. Years ago I was offered and declined the job of running BBC Films at a salary of £30,000 plus a Ford Mondeo. Times have changed and perhaps I should have accepted, since I read that the former head of Audio and Music took home a total of £419,000 in 2007-08. In addition, somebody who goes under the title of ‘BBC Vision Director’, whatever that means, recently talked about the ‘DNA of the BBC’ which must surely qualify for a Nobel scientific first. This visionary Head of Vision announced the intention of ‘bringing the production of programmes closer to the audience we serve’. I have no idea what this prophet is talking about. It is like the director of the Tate Gallery saying that he hopes to bring Tracey Emin’s unmade bed closer to those who haven’t yet had a chance to sleep in it. The BBC spends vast amounts devising in-house trailers and complicated introductory logos for its two main channels, and has elected to corrupt its news bulletins with advance soundbites accompanied by thunderous music tracks: what was wrong with the old way of just telling the news? Why all the sound and fury that now accompanies overpaid teleprompter readers?
Aping the Beeb’s extravagance, the government also spends massive amounts (£150 million and counting) of our highly taxed earnings advertising its own wares and extolling the virtues of its dubious achievements. It cannot have escaped your notice that some of the campaigns, notably those concerned with the TV and motor vehicle licences, have a decidedly threatening, Orwellian flavour. If you don’t pay your TV licence, expect to be relentlessly hounded like a felon; if your car isn’t taxed, it will be crushed in front of your eyes and presumably added to the indestructible contents of landfills. OK, both are crimes we should avoid, but there is an unwarranted vicious element to both punishments. Then there is the ludicrous campaign about ‘tax doesn’t have to be taxing’, which is not only untrue, but a total waste of money and sends people screaming to find an accountant capable of understanding the required forms. Our taxes are being squandered on a monumental scale, the debt mountain our grandchildren will inherit grows ever taller, and while many councils are turning off street lights every government department burns our midnight oil regardless of cost and carbon footprints. All the talk today is of sorting out and regulating the banks, but there is precious little discussion about reining in the obscene extravagances of the proliferating quangos, or, instead of being given quick common-sense solutions, we are forced to pay for yet another costly, long-winded judicial enquiry masterminded, of course, by the usual cast of the great and the good. Nobody falls on their sword for failure (except Lord Carrington at the time of the Falklands), and hopelessly inept placemen are shifted from department to department without betraying any sign of previous merit.
Don’t talk down Britain, we are admonished. But what, at the moment, can we talk up? We are living in the Age of Greed, when footballers complain that £60,000 a week is not enough and, secure in the knowledge that they will inherit a fireproof pension, no minister ever admits that he or she is responsible for yet another expensive cock-up. But why should they when they are led by a man who for 11 years has concealed the true extent of his fiscal follies? The gravy train now standing at Platform 97 will one day inevitably hit the buffers.