COMMUNIST TABLE-TENNIS CHAMPION and film writer Ivor Montagu was responsible for what is probably the best piece of writing about the absurd workings of Hollywood and its maniacal bosses. His book With Eisenstein in Hollywood (Seven Seas, 1968) delightfully details how B. P. “Budd” Schulberg, as a Hollywood producer, said that people preferred to see what they thought was reality rather than what was “really reality”. Thus, Schulberg has to explain to Montagu, “snow on the ground in Moscow” is an absolute, whether in July or January. This is the “Moscow of the Mind”, which should not be confused with the “real” Moscow.
I WAS THINKING ABOUT THIS MAXIM recently when reading and listening to all this kafuffle about expenses claimed by Members of Parliament in Britain. The logic behind my thinking is that, just as in Schulberg’s world, in our world there is a “parliament of the mind”, which has very little to do with the real parliament that is tasked with running Britain. It appears to me that the British public has had an idea about its elected MPs that – until recently at least – overrode reality and common sense. How on earth any of the voters imagined that their representatives would not use their expense accounts willy-nilly for all and sundry is beyond me. And, in my opinion, anyone who has to put up with the boring life of an MP deserves fringe benefits galore.
THE TRUE SCANDAL HERE involves the bargains MPs seem to be getting. I suspect that they are offered special rates simply because they are important politicians. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, apparently paid £400 for a chauffeur-driven car trip from Chester to London; last August I paid £80 for a simple cab ride from Manchester airport to Liverpool, and I have just booked a taxi from Bristol airport to Bath that will cost £50. Osborne’s deal is outrageous.
ALSO, IF GORDON BROWN CAN FIND a half-day, five-day-a-week cleaner in London who charges only £6,500 for two years’ work I want his or her phone number. Likewise David Willetts’ electrician: if the shadow universities secretary’s firm only charges £115 for fitting 25 light bulbs I feel I am being cheated by mine, at €20 every time he comes to lighten my darkened doorstep. And if Francis Maude, the Shadow Cabinet Office minister, was charged only £387.50 for moving house, then the cowboy firm that charged a friend of mine £200 for moving a fridge needs looking into.
I WAS THINKING ABOUT THIS MAXIM recently when reading and listening to all this kafuffle about expenses claimed by Members of Parliament in Britain. The logic behind my thinking is that, just as in Schulberg’s world, in our world there is a “parliament of the mind”, which has very little to do with the real parliament that is tasked with running Britain. It appears to me that the British public has had an idea about its elected MPs that – until recently at least – overrode reality and common sense. How on earth any of the voters imagined that their representatives would not use their expense accounts willy-nilly for all and sundry is beyond me. And, in my opinion, anyone who has to put up with the boring life of an MP deserves fringe benefits galore.
THE TRUE SCANDAL HERE involves the bargains MPs seem to be getting. I suspect that they are offered special rates simply because they are important politicians. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, apparently paid £400 for a chauffeur-driven car trip from Chester to London; last August I paid £80 for a simple cab ride from Manchester airport to Liverpool, and I have just booked a taxi from Bristol airport to Bath that will cost £50. Osborne’s deal is outrageous.
ALSO, IF GORDON BROWN CAN FIND a half-day, five-day-a-week cleaner in London who charges only £6,500 for two years’ work I want his or her phone number. Likewise David Willetts’ electrician: if the shadow universities secretary’s firm only charges £115 for fitting 25 light bulbs I feel I am being cheated by mine, at €20 every time he comes to lighten my darkened doorstep. And if Francis Maude, the Shadow Cabinet Office minister, was charged only £387.50 for moving house, then the cowboy firm that charged a friend of mine £200 for moving a fridge needs looking into.
MOST OF THE OTHER EXPENSES also seem to be something of a steal, suggesting that what The Telegraph ought to be doing is publishing the names of the companies who give such special deals to politicians so that the public in general could use them. The only other newsworthy aspect of all this senseless muck-raking is in the detail: John Prescott broke his toilet seat twice, two MPs have broken the actual toilet over the last two years, two have needed new toilet brushes, one, “Gorbals” John Reid, bought a “black glitter toilet seat” (for only £30), and Paul Murphy, the Welsh Secretary, used his second home allowance to spend £35 on a toilet roll holder.
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