Water, water everywhere...

We can't afford education. 
We can't afford to manage our energy supply. 
We can't afford the Arts. 
We can't afford health care free at the point of need. 
We can't afford training or skills for young people. 
We can't afford the elderly. 
We can't afford unions. 
We can't afford "Green crap". 
We certainly can't afford the sick or disabled. 
We can't afford to help people who can't find a job - but that's OK, because we don't want to help people like them anyway. 
We can't afford libraries. 
We can't afford Health and Safety. 
We can't afford soldiers' pensions, so we're sacking them weeks before they qualify. 
We can't afford woodlands. 
We can't afford Human Rights. 
We can't afford food safety inspections and anyway, why shouldn't people eat slurry? 
We can't afford the North, quite frankly, and why would we want to? 
We certainly can't afford to invest in renewables, or to put any money into mitigating the effects of climate change, or to build resilience into our infrastructure - but that is absolutely fine because there's really no such thing as climate change, honest, and we must frack the hell out of the country because there's money to be made and once again we are promising energy too cheap to meter. 
We must have permanent Austerity or else we'll become like Greece - and we wouldn't want to become like Greece, would we? 

And then - Surrey floods! Berkshire floods! Some carpets in millionaires' riverside homes get spoiled! The Queen could see flood water from the battlements of Windsor Castle, were she not staying in one of her other homes at the moment. 

And... guess what? "We are a wealthy country," says Cameron. "Money is no object."

Updated to add: apparently the unlimited cheque of our money that Cameron wrote yesterday to bail out some  Tory safe seats is going to come out of "underspend" in government departments. In other words, from cuts to social security, health, education, defence...

Standing up to be miscounted

We went on the TUC-organised March for the Alternative in London on Saturday. Got on a bus organised by Unison which left Norwich at 7.30 and were dropped at something called Gallions(sic) Reach, which is on the DLR in a docklands post-industrial wasteland near part of University of East London. Nothing like a ticket office in sight, and as we queued to tackle the ticket machines (which refused our money and insisted on debit cards only) we felt somewhat country-bumpkin-ish - in the big city and not quite sure how things work. From there to the Jubilee line at Canning Town where the platforms were crammed with protesters. We hopped off at Southwark, and instead of crossing Blackfriars bridge, nipped into the south bank in search of much needed coffee and loos. We could see a massive party going on on the embankment, and talked to a guy playing a one-stringed African guitar/harp who said 'There's not much difference between a protest and a festival'. People were gathering on the South Bank - there were some UK Uncut folk and posters saying "What the Foucault?" and "What Would Gramsci Do?". Crossed the river at Waterloo Bridge - people were thick on the ground, covering the road and pavement, and the bridge was closed to traffic coming from the North. It was impossible to get onto the Embankment there, and some polite police directed up up into the Strand and round... the crowds got thicker and thicker, a solid mass of persons from one side of the road to the other, though everyone seemed polite, cheerful and patient. Rather annoyingly there were also touts selling whistles, which was deafening, and there were the usual dullards with loudspeakers and tedious slogans - but there were also some splendid drummers. It took us two hours to get from the Strand down to the "start point" on Victoria Embankment, by which time the head of the procession had already reached Hyde Park. There was a Welsh women's choir, which I remember from Greenham Common days, a greyhound with a jacket that said on one side "Cameron, I'm no poodle" and on the other, "fight against the cats" with the a crossed out and a u written in. Lots of intelligent posters. We were glad to see a Father Ted tribute reading "Down With This Sort of Thing". Near us were the Fire Brigade union, Nurses, a sign saying "Pissed Off Social Worker", kids in pushchairs, a couple of wheelchair users and lots of other folk. We reached Westminster Bridge at 3 pm and decided we'd have to peel off to get back to the coach, which had to leave at 4.30. On the South Bank we looked across and saw the tail end of the procession passing under Waterloo Bridge - this was at 3.30, a good four hours after the head had got to Hyde Park. I suspect the estimates of 250000 - 300000 is rather below the real figure on the march - and it also doesn't count the students, who marched a different route, the people occupying Trafalgar square (including one of B's sons, and his small daughters) and the UK Uncut people who were revelling along Oxford Street, as well as those who went straight to Hyde Park. I had signed up to text message updates from the Metropolitan police, which was interesting. At one point, things obviously going too well, they informed us that "no containment - ie kettling - is in process at the moment. Later, a text came which said "light bulbs full of ammonia have been thrown at police" (I'm not sure how you would go about filling a light bulb with ammonia, even if you wanted to, but that's another matter). Shortly afterwards, no doubt after some legal consultations with the TUC's lawyers, a message came through saying "ignore last message: it was nothing to do with the march". This retraction was at about 2.30, yet when we were listening to the 6 o'clock news on the BBC in the coach on the way back, the first message about ammonia filled lightbulbs was still being repeated. Ho hum. I also got a text saying the Fortnum and Mason's "is now a crime scene" - this was about 6. 30. Apparently, the UK Uncut protesters accidentally knocked over some chocolate bunnies, the fiends. There was no mention of the baton charge against the person who put a sticker on the Olympic - doesn't bloody work - clock. Much has been made of the black-clad protesters who broke some windows at the Ritz. I didn't see any of this, though when we were walking towards Blackfriars Bridge that morning we had seen 4 or 5 young men getting out of a van accoutred in face scarfs - a bad idea, obviously. According to a Tax Justice Network, the Men in Black stated that they are against all taxation, which puts them rather a long way from the fair tax campaigners in UK Uncut. Interesting, though: I have lived in a zero-tax country (the UAE) and it is not exactly a bastion of liberation... This morning someone on the Beeb said "Anarchists - what do we know about them? How can we get in touch with them?" He almost said "can anyone put me in touch with their general secretary", but not quite.

Gutters, greed and grumbles

Two daft and depressing recent stories from the world of tabloid. And one from the fuzzy zone where tabloidness and politics merge and blend.

First off, somebody vaguely important and connected with a game that lots of people seem to like quite a lot had an ex-girlfriend. They went out to supper together and she secretly taped his conversation and sold the recording to a newspaper (actually this should be "newspaper" - it was the Mail on Sunday) for 75,000 pounds. As a result of some of the mildly indiscreet comments that he was taped making, England's chance to host a massive festival of the game that lots of people like has been destroyed for ever. Or not.

We won't know for a while but Lord Triesman (for it was he - and no, I hadn't heard of him before either) has lost his job heading the Football Association (for it was soccer - I have heard of that, but only barely) and has obviously annoyed a lot of people in the important world of football. The UK has spent a phenomenal amount of money on preparing for the Olympic games in 2o12, and evidently there was some hope that we might get a chance to recoup if we could host the football World Cup in 2018. Blown, apparently, for a mere 75,000 quids and a few more readers for the MoS.

Secondly, somebody who was once married to a former helicopter pilot who got lucky in the lottery of birth is secretly filmed soliciting huge sums of money for "access" to her ex husband. Apparently she was under the impression that meeting her ex-husband would be worth that kind of money to some of the people who have that kind of money.

But who would pay that kind of dosh to meet this rather undistinguished guy? (I believe he's a good golfer, to be fair). Well, the ex-husband has some rather nebulous role as the UK's special representative for International Trade and Investment, so quite possibly coughing up half a million quid (the price named by the ex-wife) might somehow turn out to be all worth while for the keen investor. Invest in Britain - my lovely country, with the best royal family money can buy.

Both depressingly ugly stories. Both involve a certain degree of illegality and some grey areas. For one thing, it is illegal in the UK to record a conversation without all parties being aware that recording is taking place. Journalists sometime get round this by claiming a public interest exemption (where for example the person taped has public office and the taping provides evidence of their unfitness).

But one trouble with public interest is defining it. Is it more in the public interest that Britain gets to host the World Cup, bringing huge sums into the economy? Or is it more in the public interest that we find out that someone most of us have never heard of texted his squeeze with the words "sweet dreams" and gossiped about whether one nation competing in the footie might try and bribe a referee? Who decides where the interest lies?

Then there's the general grubbiness of people "monetising" their personal relationships. I'm not sure whether Triesman's fancy, one Melissa Jacobs, was ever in it for anything other than the dosh. (She's a civil servant, apparently, and my goodness how standards must have fallen. She's also a blogger, inevitably enough.)

But how much would you sell access to your ex spouse for? Should I be offering introductions to my Beloved for the highest bidder? A current spouse, no less, and he'll probably make you a nice cup of tea too. But alas, no investment advice, so introductions to him have no monetary value.

Finally the third story - well, not so much a story as a state of affairs. The News of the World, the paper which gave us Fergie floggin access to Andrew, used to employ a private investigator and a journalist who together tapped phones, hacked into voicemail and did a lot of reprehensible stuff on a large scale. They were both caught and jailed. The paper had to pay damages to a number of victims, including footballers and members of the royal household (not, you'll note, just of people who happen to have been born or married into royalty, but also people who simply got jobs there).

During the court case in which the two were jailed, editorial staff at the paper were criticised for suffering a convenient "collective amnesia" about arrangements for the bugging, especially as regards to who knew about it, or indeed who solicited it.

The then editor especially, one Andy Coulson, claimed he knew nothing whatsoever about it - which either means he was an extremely poor editor who had no idea how the stories which appeared in his paper were obtained or what the large payments were being made for, or he was being extremely economic with the actualite. Numerous people are said to be considering suing him and the corporation for which he worked (News International, owned by Murdoch, which at the last election not only supported the Conservative Party but turned fairly rabid attacks onto Nick Clegg of the Lib Dems... until he made the deal which put Cameron in Number 10 and was suddenly hailed as a noble statesman).

Coulson is no longer editor of the News of the World, which ought to be good news. But actually, it isn't. He's now "Director of Communications" for the Prime Minister.

One wonders who is more pleased: Cameron for having such a direct line to his master's voice, Murdoch for having his bagman not in the corridors of power but inside the very office, or Coulson for the wonderful reward for his sterling career in "communications".

I'm sure all the other tabloids (those few not already in the News International kennel) are taking note.

Expect more of this. The rewards for illegality, grubby muck-raking and pursuing vendettas are great. Rather greater, one must now suppose, than the half a million quid solicited by La Fergie for a chance to press the flesh with her ex.