STYLE STATEMENT FOR CASUAL VISITORS (occasioned by reader feedback): Gushing with praise is not British. Frankly, it's embarrassing. We deliver it differently. Like this:Wednesday, March 25, 2009
From a distant planet …
Meanwhile, my co-editor goes to the Czech Republic and the government falls. Now that she is back in the country, she is hoping to repeat the effect here, with a piece later today on the glorious affair where, as England Expectsreports, EU presidency functions now fall to Vaclav Klaus. The "colleagues" are spitting with fury and are almost at a state where they are contemplating issuing black armbands.
Considering now that the constitutional Lisbon treaty ratification is now deep-sixed until at least the autumn, it was extraordinarily naff of Gordon to go sucking up to the "colleagues" in Strasbourg – the few who turned up to listen to him. He is "proud" that the treaty was ratified in the puppet parliament in Westminster by such a large majority.
What excited The Guardian though was that he flew out in a chartered BA Boeing 747, noting that his trip is likely to be remembered as one of the world's least environmentally friendly flights.
This is the same newspaper, incidentally, which is headlining a piece citing our climate change minister Ed Miliband, who is telling us that opposition to wind farms should become as socially unacceptable as failing to wear a seatbelt.
These people are seriously on a different planet. One almost feels inspired to plunge a sharp instrument into their bellies, such utter contempt does this invoke. The man is utterly barking mad – he should not be allowed to breathe, much less speak in public. Yet Irwin Stelzer thinks the man has a "formidable intellect". Sheesh, as my co-editor would say.
Iain Martin in The Daily Telegraph is certainly considering wielding the knife – albeit only metaphorically – on the ranks of MPs, asking whether we need so many. But he does at least make the right noises, noting that the exponential growth in the number of domestic elected representatives has coincided with their loss of power to the EU; we have more politicians, at a higher cost, with less usefully to do.
He misses the point – as you would expect – that even with the EU, there are many things the MPs could usefully be doing, but do not. Too many are a waste of space, and would be even if we had a return to full legislative powers after ditching the EU. But, Martin adds, the political class is embarrassed about the publicity around its allowances and keen to make it go away. Poor little darlings. I wonder if they realise how keen we are to make some of them go away … permanently.
One gets the feeling that Heffer takes that view of a certain member of the political class, observing of our favourite politician that he "doesn't even seem to know where the lifeboats are." Deliciously, he also observes that "his environmental obsessions are now bypassed by economic reality".
Actually, it is not just the "environmental obsessions". The main obsession of the political classes is the … political classes, and there is a whole world outside Westminster which is foreign territory to them … a distant planet of which they know nothing. Briefly, Mr Hannan was on that planet yesterday, which is why he was ignored by the chatterati ... even if his YouTube "views" are now up to 27,000 79,000.
The words of Ian King, in The Times, therefore, are of some interest. He labels of goodly section of our political classes as "a confederacy of hypocrites".
This is in respect of the trashing of Sir Fred Goodwin’s house and car. But they are much more than hypocrites. Locked in their Westminster bubble, they have lost touch with reality, and cannot even begin to imagine what the denizens of that "distant planet" think of them. This makes them very stupid hypocrites. And that will be their downfall.
COMMENT THREADAmateur's night out
So Daniel Hannan made a speech in the EU parliament. This one cannot avoid knowing as the inbox is full of laudatory comments and links to his You-Tube video (5,712 views), plus his blog.
As to his media coverage, there are eight links on Google News which include Gordon Brown and himself. One is his own blog and one is a BBC report that does not mention the speech. Then there are EU parliament press releases in two languages and four other foreign language reports. Google Gordon Brown, though, and you get 30,662. I make that a win to Gordon by 1 to 3,800.
That is the reality of the EU parliament. In my time, I wrote dozens of speeches for my mepps, maybe hundreds. Some were bloody good, some also-ran and some downright boring. My finest hour was a storming speech on the reform of the comitology procedures, which even got some compliments from hard europhile Tories. There's glory for you. As regards the media though, it didn't matter what was said. It was always ignored.
In the end, there became only one measure of a "good" speech. You were allocated a time – could be 90 seconds, perhaps two minutes or, if you were really "lucky" you got three minutes. The game was to write a speech which came in to the second. You had to judge your mepp's speaking rate, write accordingly and train him hard. If he didn't perform and came in over or under time, you lost points - more penalties for being "chicken" and running short.
I pulled it off once, to the very second, with the delicious victory made all the more sweet by being witnessed by Matthew Engel of The Guardian, who recorded my delight in his piece. Those were the days!
As for Hannan – he over-ran by a whole 14 seconds on his three minute slot. His problem was that the speech ran to 533 words. He should have trimmed it to 450 and cut his cadence to 150 words per minute. Content wasn't too bad, though, and a nice payoff line – but hey! Fourteen seconds is fourteen seconds! Amateur's night out!
COMMENT THREAD
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Posts
