Greedy liars

Above: the home of Labour grandee Quentin Davies.

I watched the Politics Show at lunchtime today, hoping they would cover the belltower expenses scandal (Labour grandee Quentin Davies has been charging restoration of his belltower to the public purse on the grounds that a belltower is necessary for him to carry out his duties as an MP). The Politics Show made no mention of the Labour grandee's greed, and barely covered the expenses scandal except as a discussion topic in the last few minutes. Parliament will shortly go off on another long holiday (they seem to be unaware that most people only get 21 days plus bank holidays).

I was interested in the belltower expenses scandal as a couple of years ago I made a visit to the village where Quentin Davies lives to look at his Queen Anne mansion (Pevsner writes approvingly of the architecture, although he makes no mention of a belltower). The park is screened from the road by a thick hedge but there was a gap where I managed to take the above photograph. Had I realised how much public money had gone into the upkeep of the property I might have been sufficiently enboldened to go closer.

However I now realise that taking a picture of a government minister's home was a foolish thing to do. Under new "anti-terror" legislation (which must have been passed in secret as I have never heard of it before) the police can now arrest people for taking photographs, even from a public road. By taking this picture I risked being seized by the "anti-terror" police, taken to Paddington Green police station, and from there "disappeared" into the gulag of rendition ghost camps in eastern Europe.



Above: satirist Rory Bremner as Tony Blair in a restaurant in Edgware Road. The area is a centre of London's arab community. Rory Bremner was satirising Tony Blair's appointment as "Middle Eastern envoy" for George Bush (note the hookahs).

One of the Politics Show's lead items this lunchtime was Tony Blair's shameless admission that he had made up the jusification for the Iraq war, and that if the WMD argument hadn't worked he would have just made up something else instead.

Can nothing be done about politicians who tell lies and make fools of the electorate? Certainly Tony Blair should get none of the usual honours that go to past Prime Ministers (no peerage and certainly no Garter). Perhaps the courts can confiscate the vast sums of money he has made from speaking tours on the grounds that they are the proceeds of a crime?

So in the past week British politicians have once again been exposed as greedy and as liars, with government ministers leading the way ("whiter than white my arse").