Cash for Honours

Anyone Want to Buy a Title?

The Ironmonger’s Hall, tucked beneath the Museum of London, is home to the Ironmonger’s Company, a medieval guild concerned very much with iron, ironworks, working with iron, and furthering the secret, closely guarded interests of iron-people and their irony ways. The City of London might be famous for forcing newness on other people – new working practices or bizarre new forms of dodgy credit – but amongst their own ranks they like nothing more than a bit of archaic weirdness, bonding together in ancient closed shops with dizzying rituals.

The hall looks suitably old: a bit Tudory, all of stone and oak. In fact it was opened in 1925 and is something of a put-on designed to whip up a spot of quick awe. This made it an apt setting for the event I had come to witness. On this weekday lunchtime at the beginning of ‘disappointing’ June, the hall was hosting an auction of ancient British titles by property consultants Strutt & Parker. Going under the hammer were 5 baronies and 33 lordships of the manor. These were the kind of titles bought by City Boys, carpet kings, footballers, or anybody else who seems to have forgotten there’s a recession on and we are supposed to be being all grown up and putting egotism to one side.

The winners wouldn’t sit in the Lords (or bag any property), although there could be benefits – a few years ago, Chris Eubank became Lord of the Manor of Brighton (yes not everything down here is uber cool) which apparently entitled him to 4,000 herrings a year; maybe that’s why he needs that big truck?

The interior was all coat of arms wall hangings, portraits of the young Prince Phillip, capacious wood panelling. At a desk I registered for the event (twenty quid!) and was provided with a handsomely tooled silver booklet on the titles up for grabs and a name badge with a coat of arms on it (the armorial bearings of Strutt & Parker): nice.

I was here to get beneath the froth and consider real power. Old power. Aristocratic power. Britain’s ruling caste. How William of Normandy landed on this land, turfed the Saxon landlords off their land and dished out titles to the new lords of the land after generally knocking everyone and everything about a bit (setting in train centuries of upper class bad behaviour). Before the auction started, I sat in the hall, a 60 foot affair (sorry can’t do meters but then you know that already) with cascading chandeliers and stained glass, eating the free biscuits and coffee, watching the title hungry file in; judging by appearances older City folk on extended lunch breaks, plus the occasional country type and random oddball (that would be me then). I assumed the super rich and famous would be using the manned phone lines on the side of the auction block.

The refreshments table was buzzing (no wonder, yes it was £20 to get in but if you put your back into it you could easily drink yourself up on the deal) – I stayed off the sauce for fear of rash bidding under the influence; one false wave of the hand in an exuberant “more wine” gesture and we could end up Lord of Somewhere or other which was definitely not in the plan. Not that I hadn’t considered the benefits; you could have a title which admittedly didn’t come with anything more than petty privileges but in general there weren’t any obligations either – like unquestioning military service to the monarch (which might stop the most status hungry carpet king in his tracks). And if I did get the right to graze my sheep somewhere, that might come in handy if we ever get those sheep we’re always talking about.

As the auction started I retired to the large wooden balcony at the back of the room so that I could survey the bidders and realised they didn’t look like barons and earls. No swagger. The auctioneer perched behind his lectern – a suited bespectacled chap in his 50’s – was fleshing out each lot’s history. Well sort of; what was for sale was, of course, just a title – the Lord of the Manor titles were divorced from their original locale by a law passed in 1922. But the auctioneer kept talking about the places at considerable length. He told us that Carriglaine is ‘famous for porcelain’: the place that is. Of the house at Hamstall Ridware he revealed that ‘Jane Austin stayed there and wrote some chapters’ – she did..... in the house ... which you’re not buying!

The Lordship and feudal barony of Castle Knock, County Dublin was, the auctioneer explained, ‘near Lucan, famous for the lord of that name who disappeared’ – a smile and mild titters from the crowd. I decided not to interrupt and say he disappeared after murdering his children’s nanny at the home of his estranged wife.

But what were these people buying into, hoovering up Norman bestowed feudal titles? The Normans were professional rampagers, Vikings who settled in northern France in the 10^th Century. Their oppression of the native Britons was appalling, we became their bitch, their beast, dragging their shitty French plough. I wanted to shout from the balcony ‘You’re buying your own oppression!’ but I thought this might look a bit mental so I had another biscuit and just thought it.

The auctioneer was a bit of a joker – or so he had decided – when he got to Lot 28 Lord of the Manor of Bracknell he could resist telling us it was made ‘famous by Oscar Wilde’s portrayal of Lady Bracknell  in The Importance of being Earnest – we all knew what was coming next – we braced ourselves as he screeched ‘A Haaaaandbaaag?” (the lot went for £7,000: £3,500 below the guide price).

In truth I was getting a bit bored by now. There was no manic auction frenzy, no jumping about, it was all a tad sedate – cash in the Attic this was not. But then all of a sudden things picked up. The penultimate lot was Lordship of the Manor of Bermondsey in south east London and the bidding was brisk and a little aggressive before it went to a phone bidder for £55,000. I thought how he would celebrate – perhaps heading for a few of the local pubs to proclaim his new status or maybe hitting the terraces of the New Den for Millwall’s next home game. Either way he was probably heading for a lively time.

Afterwards as I waited with the press (all two of them) to see if Strutt & Parker would divulge the identity of the 55 grand Bermondsey phone bidder (Theo Paphitis? Babs Winsor? Barrymore!) but they didn’t. In fact there was very little information about and the phone bidder was staying anonymous. I managed to ask why they would do that and the spokesperson said titles had become trendy wedding gifts (!) so they were often kept secret. Interestingly one person who had bought one two years ago said they had done it precisely to hide their identity – he said if he didn’t want to he didn’t have to sign his real name anymore – just using his title which was always enough for hotels and the like AND you could get credit cards issues with the titles; the whole thing was becoming more interesting!

Just as I was planning to leave the Mail on Sunday woman grabbed my arm and said she had bagged the new owner of the Lord Plumpton title. He was a self made property magnate called Mike Holland who owned the 18^th Century manor house on the edge of my beloved Brighton to which the title once belonged, Stanmer House. I asked him if he was planning to now ruthlessly subdue the local natives but he didn’t seem that interested so I felt I as safe heading home.

The Normans subdued everything of course. For generations following the invasion they (1% of the population controlling virtually 100% of the land) refused to inter marry with we Brits and created the first known apartheid. But irony was to have the last laugh (can you say that?) when in 1204 Philip II of France muscled in on Normandy and gave the Normans a choice: come back to Normandy and keep it under his control; or stay in England and become English. There was no contest – France is warmer and has all that runny cheese and crackin booze – but amazingly the Normans chose to stay here and become English. It probably started raining at that exact moment. That’s not in any of the sources but it probably did happen.

Later in the week BBC South Today showed Mike Holland back at Stanmer House – it’s actually a conference/wedding venue he opened with the help of David Van Day of Dollar. The female news reporter walked into the entrance hall, past a suit of armour talking of a new lord of the manor...”but while he has a coat, it’s not a coat of arms, it’s a coat of fur....”. Yes, Mike had conferred the title on his pet white Alsatian Dillon.

Dillon was having a bit of a bark at her but, undaunted she said to Mike “people might say you’re barking mad” (see what she did there?) “you’ve spent £29,000 on buying a title for Dillon, why?”. Holland, who is truly rock and roll in EVERY way said ‘We’re all barking mad round here, that’s part of the fun...’

Glad to see that Brighton won’t be subdued ruthlessly (I think a bright shiny ball would soon distract Dillon from that plan) and the titles remain in the hands of the barking mad, no longer through inbreeding, now more by selective breeding.

Britain is truly safe in their hands..................................

Englishness - is it all it's cracked up to be?

ENGLAND IS BACK! The polls show people in England are suddenly feeling more ‘English’ than ‘British’: Telegraph readers, white van men, Billy Bragg...all together getting weepy over the end of The Railway Children.

I too had been feeling this way, changing my address on my headed paper to England rather than United Kingdom, that kind of stuff, and as I had arranged a weekend break in Stratford Upon Avon I looked forward to a bit of good old patriotism – after all that’s what Will Shakespeare was good at right?

The great thing about Stratford is that, yes, Shakespeare was born there, but they don’t like to make a fuss about it. It’s a self-confident little town that knows it has many other attractions. Ha! Only joking – they never shut up about it. All over town, it’s Shakespeare this, Falstaff that. Even the coach station is called The Birthplace Coach Terminal.

It wasn’t always thus. When Shakespeare’s own company, the King’s Men, tipped up in 1622 to perform in a Stratford in the grip of Puritanism, they were paid to go away (as a musician I’ve been there and it’s not nice trust me); the Borough Chamberlain recording in his accounts: ‘To the King’s Players for not playing in the Hall 6/-. But that changed and the rest is history as they say. Ian Ousby likened the 19^th Century town to the medieval catholic church – powered by solemn reverence, blatant hype and bogus relics – and the birthplace became a tourist trap with many writers including Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle scratching their name into the window frame (Scott carved: Byron is a twat).

Having checked into the Shakespeare Hotel and taken a stroll down Shakespeare Street we set off for the Courtyard Theatre where we were seeing Richard II. Once in our seats we eagerly anticipated the rich hit of literary patriotism; Shakespeare is of course English/British (he often melds the two like a yank Tourist) but bagging him up with nationalist sentiment is tricky – being one sided is very much what nationalism is all about whereas plays tend to require a spot of dynamism. So when the government requested a propaganda version of Henry V during WW2 Laurence Olivier had to take out the scenes with English troops being infiltrated by traitors, English soldiers committing war crimes against the French, and Henry shrugging off the nameless dead in his own ranks – plus the general tenor of the play that war is a fruitless waste of life. ‘Loving your work Larry, loving it! But I wonder if we can tweak it a bit by taking some of the central themes and completely reversing them? Yes you still get to ride the horse............’

But one speech does unequivocally stir up ‘we’re the best’ passions: the sceptre isle speech in Richard II “this other Eden..this happy breed of men...this precious stone set in a silver sea..this tophole place that everyone knows deep down is the dogs bollocks” (think that’s how it goes).

According to history Richard II started off well, bashing the hopes of his people by ruthlessly repressing the Peasants Revolt aged just 14. Shakespeare takes up the story when the young Plantagenet had gone to cat-crap with arrogant self regard (seems a bit harsh that, I mean he was king – these days people get arrogant and self-regarding if they know someone who’s met Matt Lucas and David Walliams in their lady costumes) and by having ‘favourites’, history speak for effeminate guys. This performance has him powdered and poncey and just asking to be usurped – the message was clear, England cannot be ruled by somebody who can’t take his ale but can take it up the chuffer. To be honest John of Gaunt’s great speech came and went. We’re not saying people should stand up and cheer at that bit, that would be a bit too much but it does provide one important insight into Englishness; Gaunt follows his ruddy litany by detailing England’s dereliction and shame. He says thanks to Richard, England is now ‘bond in with shame’, the country that had been ‘wont to conquer others/hath made a shameful conquest of itself’. Richard had screwed England so much that its now screwing itself when we all knew it should be screwing other countries!

So, we concluded England has been going to the dogs since at least  1399 which is over 600 years ago – and that’s a lot of dogs. Afterwards we headed for a curry at the Thespians Indian Restaurant – happily there were no thespians in it.

Think I’ll change my address back to United Kingdom – seems the right thing to do...............

Am I getting too old??

I turned 54 recently (well not that recently I’m racing to 55 now!) and for the first time that feeling of old age hit me. I’m not old of course and I could live many more years – my mother just made 87 – but I did feel down and decided to research some elder statesmen who are a little older than me.

The oldest complete skeleton found in Britain is called the Cheddar Man (he was found in the Cheddar Gorge, he’s not made of cheese – you were mistakenly thinking of the moon there). He dates from around 7150BC: about 4,500 years before the first stones were erected at Stonehenge. Older parts of humans have been found, but the Cheddar man, who now resides in the Natural History Museum, is the oldest complete true Brit.

Mr Cheddar has butchery marks on his boles, as if he’s been professionally sliced up in some way. Naturally this being pre-history, this is contested: he may, for example, just have over enthusiastically scratched an itch. (if you’re turned off history cos it’s a bit argumentative don’t even bother going anywhere near pre-history. The guys in this field are animals). Turn away if you’re of a nervous disposition, but basically, he was probably eaten.

The Lindow Man meanwhile is the naturally preserved body of an Iron Age man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss, Cheshire. He lives in the British Museum and looks like a deflated football. Lindow man dates from between 2BC and 119AD the time of the Celts and the Druids and the good news is he wasn’t eaten. On the downside he was probably a human sacrifice. Of course all the sources saying the Druids/Celts sacrificed humans are Roman and therefore possibly fabricated, as they were unlikely to give good reviews of a population they were ruthlessly suppressing. The Roman writer Tacitus wrote of ‘religious groves dedicated to superstition and barbarous rites’; Lucian of ‘trees sprinkled with human blood’. But the archaeological evidence indicates that they may well have liked a touch of human sacrificing, probably usually criminals or slaves, possibly burnt alive in huge baskets made of wicker.

Human butchery in these isles. It’s a shocker. That’s your roots for you. You watch programmes on the tele like Tribe and you see a world where everyone is close to nature and to each other and no one is ever ignored for long and it all seems quite inspiring. Then some elder wise man strats beating the crap out of the kids with sticks (to ward off evil spirits) and you think: balls to that for a game of soldiers and move to Swindon instead.

I actually popped in to see Cheddar Man on my 54^th birthday. I was on my way somewhere else but thought I was feeling very old and he would cheer me up – unfortunately he was out. Now I don’t mean  he was REALLY out, on the town, doing the clubs, I mean he wasn’t on display. The books all say he’s in the Natural History Museum, he’s on their website. He’s the oldest complete skeleton found in Britain – of course he’s going to be on display in the country’s foremost repository of things historic – why would anybody need to check! And how would you check anyway; ring the museum and ask “is the Cheddar Man in?”

It’s all dinosaurs now of course. Old Cheddar man is upstairs in a cupboard somewhere. I’m sure they’ll put him out again one day – well if they haven’t chucked him in a skip or something. I came looking for solace that my old age feelings were nothing – I left with foreboding for my ignored future however limited that was.

The People we Brits love to hate

BRITIAN’S TOP ENEMIES

THE DANES: You wouldn’t think it to look at them now, but they were once huge bastards

THE FRENCH: In the 18^th Century Britishness was built on four mainstays according to top Britishness academic Linda Colley: Protestantism, war, the pursuit of profit, and hating the French. Nelson prescribed: “you must hate a Frenchman as you hate the devil”

THE ROMANS: Slaughtered Boudica and subjugated the noble, woad-spattered Britons. On the plus side introduced under floor heating which cuts radiator clutter

THE NORMANS: Prototype French. Cunningly also Danish

THE SPANISH: No gripe for ages on this front, but at the opening of Parliament in 1656, Cromwell declared: “Why, truly, your great enemy is the Spaniard. He is a natural enemy, he is naturally so”. You don’t get speeches like that at the opening of Parliament anymore – more’s the pity.

THE ARGIES: All smoothed over now, so it’s OK to eat corned beef again – except it’s disgusting. Here’s an idea: let’s have  war with whichever nation is responsible for luncheon meat (I do hope it’s the French)

IRAQ: Seems they posed a considerable threat – but well, they won’t be bothering us for a while

THE DUTCH: Attempted to rival Britain for naval supremacy before giving up to become pot sodden whore monsters

THE GERMANS: Number One all time top enemy. The wave of anti German feeling during WW1 even saw angry mobs attacking Dachshunds. We have it on the strictest authority of my gran that the Boche will rise again – Achtung! Achtung!

THE YANKS: And after all we’d done for them! At the time of the War of Independence it was feared defeat would mean the dismemberment of the Empire. But the Empire went on to be the largest the world had even seen. So who’s laughing now eh?

The ugly truth about the kilt (not really)

With a head nod to Steve Lowe

When Scotsmen proudly don their kilt for another wedding or to claim supremacy at a Burns night, they are expressing a rich tradition – a rich tradition that was invented way back in the mists of time: in 1822. But then, 1822 was quite a long time ago...

This was the year that Scots literary giant Sir Walter Ivanhoe Scott and military man David Stewart of Garth prepared a massive pageant for the fat, drunken monarch George IV (the first visit north of the border by a reigning monarch since Charles II). Basically wanting to show off a bit, the Lowland Scots suddenly stopped thinking of their moor-dwelling neighbours as dangerous lowlife and instead got well highland themselves: out came the kilts and the tartan, and the immortal pipes – all nearly as novel for the Lowlanders as for the fat King himself.

George’s visit – one and twenty daft days according to one observer – included balls (oh, the balls), walkabouts (oh, the walkabouts) and general ‘huzzas’ from adoring crowds (this was quite a turn-up, because most people thought he was a complete arsehole). Now finally, all the Scots looked Scottish.

Ironically, this festival of kitsch Highlandism was just after the first and before the second load of Highland Clearances, which saw hired thugs brutally expunging the Highlands of your actual Highlanders. These Clearances were not really post Culloden English revenge on rebel clans, more the Lowland Scots Lords developing a brutal eye for sheep related profit.......so anyone wearing a Scottish sweater is basically a bastard.

Tory Lies and Damned Statistics

All praise to Zoe Williams

Here is the problem with the economy, and the coalition's stewardship of it, from an observer's point of view: they say "the huge burden of debt the last government left us with", and although I smell a rat, I cannot smell how large this rat is. Ed Balls or – more audibly, actually – Gordon Brown before him, can say this deficit reduction policy is lunacy, but it's hard within a context of adversarial politics to tell how much danger we're really in.

A Tory MP might say on Any Questions, "We have to do this or we'll end up like Ireland", and we might know instinctively that we're not Ireland yet not know exactly how unlike Ireland we are. It's straightforward to disagree with specific cuts – but maybe, because it's simpler, we're arguing about which tree to cut down when we should be arguing about the whole programme of deforestation.

Michael Mendelson is now an academic at the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, but his relevance for these purposes is his work in government: he was at the centre of fiscal policy during the great Canadian "bloodbath budget", the massive-scale deficit reduction undertaken by Jean Chrétien's liberal command in the mid-90s.

Canada's success was the ideal held up in Tory electioneering: it is rare to effect successful consolidation – to the extent that it's only happened six times among OECD nations since 1970, and one of those was Greece (in other words, it didn't happen but looked as if it had). Apparently Tories did solicit advice from key players of the Chrétien experiment prior to Britain's 2010 election, but only about the mechanics of deficit reduction. Nobody asked whether conditions were right. Nobody asked if it was a good idea to try this at home.

The first problem is that the UK is nothing like Canada. They succeeded because they had vigorous growth, their exports were strong (oil and manufacturing, both to the US, which was also booming) and private-sector demand for labour was outstripping the public sector cuts from the minute they started.

Mendelson explains: "You can't just choose when you're going to cut your debt, any more than you can say 'I'm going to sell my house now and get the same price as I got three years ago'. There's a market. And it's odd that the people who are the most defensive of the market don't seem to understand that fiscal management is also part of the market. You can't just decide that you're going to free up resources that are currently being used by government unless you're sure there's somebody else who's going to buy them."

To edge back a step, our deficit was nothing like Canada's either. Theirs had been rising steadily since 1974, and debt had got to 70% of GDP. Ours was 30% before the financial crash, a figure that is manageable, almost respectable. Mendelson observes: "You're an extremist country, it's odd. You don't think of yourselves that way. But you are. There is no crisis in Britain. Even if you're not a Keynesian, at the very least you'd admit that it is incredibly risky to implement a massive one- or two-year cutback in public-sector spending in the midst of what everybody recognises as the most dangerous period of economic turbulence since the Great Depression. Why would you do that now?"

The totem of the huge New Labour overspending that has brought us all to our knees is fiction. This might explain why the opposition never complained about it at the time. There was an upturn in national debt after the financial crisis and the bailouts, and "you couldn't have carried on like that indefinitely", says Mendelson. "But with some moderate constraint, washing out the transient effects of the crisis, the rate of increase of the debt would have been moderated."

But that is just the beginning of how phoney the coalition's war against debt really is. If we're nothing like Canada we're nowhere near Ireland either. "Ireland didn't have a debt crisis. Ireland had a balanced budget, it had a very low debt-to-GDP ratio. Ireland's problem started because they decided to guarantee all the bank debt. So if you want to look at the Irish problem and say 'we don't want to end up like that', the first thing to ask is 'what's the structure of the UK bank debt?'"

Nobody's asking that because to accuse the banks of anything is taken as the last resort of the deficit denier. It's time to own up to that, instead of backing away. It's time to start denying this deficit properly. Imagining for a second that even with this misinformation and mismanagement the economy pulls through, what's the best-case scenario?

"If the world continues to recover economically you'd probably be looking at continued slow rise in unemployment for another couple of years, a stagnant GDP, you'll probably miss the deficit targets, unless they have been purposefully understated. And then, four or five years hence, you will begin to recover, much more slowly than the rest of the world. Your debt-to-GDP ratio won't be that much better because your GDP won't have grown that much and your debt remains your debt. But sure, you'll be into a period of renewed growth four or five years hence, after a significant amount of pain."

And that growth would have happened anyway?

"Well, it would have happened a lot sooner."

The good news is that I'm out of space to pass on the worst-case scenario.

Elected Coppers - No Thanks?

With thanks to Ed West

I hate to use the phrase “liberal elite”, I really do. It should be on a Right-wing banned list along with “metropolitan liberals”, “Hampstead/Islington liberals” and “political correctness”, whether the mad or sane variety (and I’m sure I’ve used all of them). But looking into the reasoning of those who opposed Government plans for elected police chiefs last night it’s hard not to.

The proposal was killed off with a Lords amendment, voted out by, among others, former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Blair. Sally Hamwee, the Liberal Democrat rebel whose amendment it was, told peers it would lead to “the politicisation of the police”. She said: “I fear that what is populist may sometimes be dangerous, and may not reflect the needs of those who can shout less loudly.”

She’s not the only one. One legal society has warned that “a significant reason for resisting this reform is the irrefutable tenet that the police must not be swayed by public opinion”, because this might encourage miscarriages of justice. Liberty oppose it because “the proposals threaten the centuries old pillar of police independence”, while the Local Government Association says it could “fragment local partnerships” with councils.
Populism? Public opinion? Didn’t we just have a referendum last week based on the principle that, ultimately, the public does the right thing, one which the liberal elite lost? Damn, there I go again.

There might be problems with the model proposed by the government, but isn’t the idea that the public has more control over government officials a good thing? Not to everyone.
Blair has been bitterly opposed to reform of the police ever since Mayor Boris Johnson removed him in 2008. Last year he wrote in the Guardian: “And then there is the announcement of the introduction of elected police commissioners, apparently drawn from the US model of elected sheriffs, without any intellectual underpinning or historical understanding of the kind of national compact between the UK police and its public.”

But that is exactly the point; there is no national compact right now. Many of the police’s natural supporters feel completely alienated by the service’s hierarchy, and its priorities; they cannot understand police decision-making, the ludicrous overkill when investigating some petty crimes, the failure to put foot patrols out, the lack of interest in dealing with burglary, street robbery and what is now euphemistically called “anti-social behaviour”, the mentality that crime is a “social problem”, the proliferation of “thieves operate here” signs which basically say “we don’t”.

A few years back Sir Ian, as he was then, complacently declared that people in Haringey could leave their doors unlocked; as a taxpayer in Haringey, and one who lives in the London postcode with the highest burglary rate in the capital, I can assure him that is not true. Yet there seems to be no redress, because the people with power wish to impress those who appoint them, government officials; that’s why police chiefs seem more interested in winning over Guardian readers, by ticking the right ideological boxes, than Mail or Express readers.
It was also reported today that there would be tougher penalties for burglars, but that large numbers would still escape jail. To many people the idea that anyone who commits burglary – an incredibly serious crime which causes huge emotional damage to the victim, and fear in their neighbours – should escape jail is baffling. But many people do not have a say, because presumably to ask ordinary people would be populist. This has to change.