Simon Carr
The Sketch: Happy-clapping with the jargonistas
Published: 12 January 2007
Bits and bites. Jim Knight told Education questions that he completely rejected the idea that A-levels had been dumbed down. In our first A-level year, we translated every last 17th-century Alexandrine in Andromache; now they translate whole articles from French newspapers. Why is this question still so arguable?
The Sketch: The artist and the accountant: united, at last, in an extra-orderly transition
Published: 11 January 2007
I came late into the chamber and saw the Prime Minister laying about himself; a little raddled perhaps, by the years, but still the master of his domain. And beside him, the Chancellor looking strangely relaxed, almost calm, collegialising occasionally with John Reid (I think we've all given up on Dr Demento as a contender, haven't we?)
The Sketch: If Question Time was for anything, nobody now knows what that was
Published: 10 January 2007
Is it me, or is there nothing happening down there? They do what they can to Keep Buggering On, in Churchill's wartime phrase, but there is an underlying - not to say overarching - sense of nothing much happening. The only movement is that of the interregnum moving into its maturity. The standing water does nothing except stand ever stiller.
The Sketch: Lies, damned lies and freedom of information
Published: 09 January 2007
Blameless as he may be (there's a gift to hecklers) Jack Straw has the suave geniality of the classic English villain. He cares about tailoring. He has his quiet, lizardly smile. He has pale, strangler's hands which he uses to choke people behind his arras. Doesn't he? The libel lawyer points out that this is entirely untrue. But how does she know?
The Sketch: It's claws out as the angry polecat meets Tom Brown
Published: 20 December 2006
Earlier this year, Vera Baird passed me by as I was talking to one of the Tories' keen young reformers and made what I can only describe as a continental noise in her throat. Kinder souls than myself explained it away, but I felt it communicated a fathomless disgust at an entire sector of modern ideological life.
The Sketch: The unreportable truth about Tessa
Published: 19 December 2006
It always happens at this time of year. The last week before Christmas, St Lucy's just gone, the days still getting shorter, and John Donne ringing in our ears. "I am every dead thing," he says, and it's easy to see what he means as ministers for Culture turn scum into sludge - "the whole world's sap is sunke".
The Sketch: Tories slump into that old complacency
Published: 15 December 2006
The Tories seem to be slumping back into a born-to-rule complacency. Teresa May produced some party research showing how poor the government record was on written parliamentary answers.
The Sketch: Pollytics: Real life as you always dreamed it
Published: 14 December 2006
The divide between the Polly Toynbee school of governors and the one advocated by my lot (by which I don't mean the Conservative Party) is wide. Her manifesto is based on the idea of an active state reliably able to do good things: let's call it Pollytics. The minority to which I belong inclines to believe that even a benevolently active state will most often do more harm. We call this politics.
The Sketch: Finally, as he departs, Blair sees limit of Government
Published: 13 December 2006
Take the money and go. That's my advice to young people thinking of working out four weeks' notice. It's the longest month of your life. The status you've built up collapses. People stop telling you things. There isn't any point in gossiping to you as you've nothing to share (people stop telling you things). Juniors cheek you. And then in the final stages you become invisible in the corridors. It's like a long slow dissolve. One's ghostliness becomes the most obvious thing about you.
The Sketch: If MPs can't decide what is British, how can they decide what is art?
Published: 12 December 2006
Making things better makes them worse; it's well known. Politicians see that church schools get better results, so they encourage them.
The Sketch: Official ignorance punished with brutal questions
Published: 08 December 2006
That nice young Liam Byrne, with the engaging smile, he became the second Home Office minister to fly into the ack-ack of the European Scrutiny Committee. His wreckage mingles with Joan Ryan's (the Marigold gloves are all that is identifiably Joan).
The Sketch: How to lead until 2020: free food for babies; A-levels for all
Published: 07 December 2006
Several interesting things Gordon Brown revealed to us. You don't expect that in a pre-Budget report.
The Sketch: PM's approach is MAD - it's called atomic logic
Published: 05 December 2006
Lesser politicians say one thing and mean another. Our Prime Minister says one thing and its opposite and believes them both at the same time. As we're on the subject of atomic weapons we might consider applying Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle to him. Not that the Prime Minister's uncertain about anything. No, but we may be forgiven for being uncertain about him.
Simon Carr: Predictions are interesting only if they predict that which is unpredictable
Published: 02 December 2006
The Sketch: The art of saying two things at once, and nothing at all
Published: 01 December 2006
The House was meeting at the behest of Michael Connarty's European Scrutiny Committee to scrutinise and vote on some piece of egregious euro-creep, bringing our criminal justice functions into the jurisdiction of Europe. A debate like this is heroic rather than practical; one of the very few members attending recalled that a minister had frankly said that the Government didn't have to abide by the vote if it didn't want to, and that resistance was futile. It's the sort of parliament Henry VIII would have recognised.
The Sketch: Prescott roars to victory in battle of the swamp
Published: 30 November 2006
After Prescott, I went off to look at a Committee on Delegated Legislation about Double Tax arrangements (Poland). What a difference. From the barnyard to the boneyard. The deep, deep peace of delegated legislation with Dawn Primarolo is restorative, at my age.
The Sketch: You need sat-nav, a map and a time trumpet for this lot
Published: 29 November 2006
I love my sat-nav. But unless I know where I'm going, a map is also essential. Health questions is like that. The verbal directions are, at the very least questionable. Without extensive local knowledge you've no idea whether you're going north, south, left or right.
The Sketch: Reid has nothing to say, so he says something stupid
Published: 28 November 2006
The Sketch: Dr John and the politics of posturing
Published: 24 November 2006
It's impossible not to "play politics" if you're a politician. Aren't John Reid and Gordon Brown "playing politics" over terror? Why wouldn't they be? David Davis kicked off yesterday's debate by remarking on the Chancellor's ambition to be Britain's "terror overlord"; Dr Reid ostentatiously concealed his private smile. Davis said that each wanted to look tough in comparison with his rival. He elaborated this with the Prime Minister's efforts to get the Tories "on the wrong side of the argument" by tearing up the consensus on the terror legislation with demands for 90 days detention. It wasn't clear what the score was by the end of the game (the PM never loses).
The Sketch: This little piggie is just a copycat
Published: 23 November 2006
If you remember, Squealer strolled across the farmyard upright. And the farmyard marvelled, down there on Animal Farm. In the end, they looked from pig to human and human to pig, and no one could tell which was which. The cry of "Four legs good, two legs bad!" had been replaced by "Four legs good, two legs better!"
The Sketch: Let the accounting games begin
Published: 22 November 2006
The rigorous, scrupulous cost control of the Olympics was making us laugh because they'd forgotten to add VAT to the budget. Foolish laughter, as it turns out. They hadn't forgotten to add it. They'd left it off deliberately. Why? Because, Tessa said, the Olympic Authority's tax status wasn't clear. How rigorous is that? Had that been included in the accountants' "probability assessment"?
The Sketch: The political art of survival... Bore everyone
Published: 21 November 2006
For those who have never seen the point of Andrew Smith, please read on. I realise how little that sentence seems to offer. And you may be put off by his chosen theme for the Communities and Local Government debate. Andrew Smith on climate change makes Al Gore look like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
The Sketch: Clarity is the enemy of the new political class
Published: 17 November 2006
Unless he's the cleverest. That's how the brilliant detective swings in his evaluation of a suspect. "He must be the stupidest criminal in the country... unless he's the cleverest."
The Sketch: PM comes out swinging against lightweight opponent
Published: 16 November 2006
Black Rod. Gold Stick. Silver Stick. Maltravers Herald Extraordinary. Bluemantle. Rouge Dragon Pursuivant. Personally, I find it hard to see any of this as ridiculous. How can you be unattractive in so much braid and in such sheer stockings? The Serjeant at Arms has extremely nice legs, we can all see that. And of course the ostrich plumes, the gold breastplates and the tight, white riding trousers that stir those odd feelings we better not go into.
The Sketch: No one is to blame in age of ministerial irresponsibility
Published: 08 November 2006
I've been introduced to the idea of an "acephalic society". I'm very excited by this. It means "headless". (But you knew that.) My anthropological adviser says we are increasingly heading towards headlessness. This explains a great deal about my experience of the House of Commons (Sketches passim). I knew the futility, the fatuousness, the obvious vapidity of the scrutiny process was more interesting than it seemed; its uselessness is almost overladen with meaning.
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