If a policy is in crisis, hand it to the Post Office — or the Girl Guides
Well I never. You think the government has taken its eye off the ball. You think they’ve got nothing to do except rear up in the Daily Mail to tell us how lucky we all are, or pen little slurs in political magazines because they are jealous that they never get to hang out with Shami Chakrabarti. Then, suddenly, they go and hit you with a move of real, breathtaking political genius. They decide to hand over ID cards to the Post Office.
That’s a good one, isn’t it? That’s raw, political cynicism at its best. How can you be anti-ID cards if those same ID cards are going to be saving the Post Office? No matter if they are only for dodgy foreign nationals at first. Your sleepy rural branch has just been handed a lifeline. Bing! Window Nine! ‘Ah, Mr Abu Qatada, is it? Yes, fingerprint here, please. And can we interest you in any of our additional services? Home insurance, perhaps? No? Not worried about burglary, sir? House quite secure? Ah. Jolly good.’ Brilliant. It’s only a proposal, for now, and the story looked like it came from the Post Office. The suspicion, surely, has to be that it did not. If the government plays this right, the issues of ID cards and Post Office preservation could become irrevocably entwined. I don’t mean to gush, but it really is damnably clever. Hand a new, loathed, controversial measure over to a beloved, failing national institution, and the traditionalist nay-sayers don’t know which way to leap. In the British psyche, some things are more important than liberty. The Post Office is one of them.
There are others. In fact, I’m sensing opportunity here. This could be the start of something big. Girl Guides are in crisis. Did you hear about that? There are 50,000 girls waiting to dib dib their dibs, or whatever, but the Criminal Records Bureau haven’t vetted enough adults to supervise them while they do so. What to do with 50,000 unsupervised Girl Guides? I’m thinking dirty thoughts — oh yes, I’m thinking we put them in charge of monitoring dustbins.
The microchips aren’t working out, and nobody wants the council snooping through their waste. But the girls in blue? ‘A girl of 13 was fighting for her life yesterday, after contracting tetanus. There were angry scenes around the home of wicked, old, blind, one-hipped pensioner Mrs McGinty, 87, who had carelessly left a baked beans tin in her newspaper basket. “I’ll never forgive myself!” wailed the callous old hag, as police led her, very slowly, away...’ As soon as you start thinking laterally, a world of opportunity opens up. It’s a shame the Queen Mum is dead. We could have put her in charge of 42-days detention without charge. Still, there are other royals who could carry it off. Maybe we could keep them all in Buckingham Palace. Princess Michael of Kent would help out with waterboarding. Prince Philip too. Somebody could denounce Paul Burrell. The public would love that. David Davis wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
Could speed cameras go inside old red phone boxes? Perhaps the old Routemaster buses could be brought back after all, and turned into mobile needle exchanges for homeless drug addicts. The RSPCA could take over the TV Licensing authority. Think how much harder it would be to refuse to let them in. Plus, maybe you would get a discount, if your dog was only black and white.
London Zoo is another untapped resource. The only question is whether it should be given the House of Lords, the Church of England or the Olympic Village. Personally, I favour the last one. This £450 million black hole is a worry, true enough, but if they charge the athletes £17 every time they get home (£55.50 if they want to bring their families), the problem would soon shrink to more manageable proportions. If all else fails, they can surely share out some cages. The sprinters with the lions, the gymnasts with the monkeys. Everybody wins.
In its dying years, the last Conservative government was constantly hit by accusations that it was selling off the family silver. Privatisation, the critics said, for political gain. Bravo to this lot for realising that Britain has some silver left. Not physical assets, this time, but goodwill. What could be more valuable for a government so bereft? Use it, flog it, exploit it, drive it into the ground. Like I said, this could be the start of a whole new movement. Political genius. I am in awe.
Travel writing has become increasingly weird in recent years. Hitch-hiking around Ireland with a fridge (Round Ireland With a Fridge, Tony Hawks), criss-crossing the UK to find people called Dave Gorman (Are You Dave Gorman?, Dave Gorman), all that sort of thing. Last week, a book landed on my desk which may be the apotheosis of the genre. In the Bath, by the comedian explorer Tim FitzHigham, charts a journey undertaken for Comic Relief in which the hero rowed across the Channel in a bathtub. If an American takes to sea in a bathtub, it is wackiness. If a Frenchman does so, it is surreal. It takes a Brit, I think, to make it eccentric.
FitzHigham is that. I met him last year at a big, very starry book awards dinner. We were in the coat queue. It was like a slightly irritable version of Madame Tussauds. There were vicious whispers that Emily Maitlis had just pushed to the front.
‘Tim,’ said FitzHigham, shaking my hand. Then he started to tell me about his bathtub. Copper, plug kept falling out, the coastguard made him put a plug on the shower, etc. All around us, everybody was listening. If this is the kind of thing you have done, I suppose you do tend to tell strangers about it. But still, I wondered if he was winding me up.
‘I showered,’ said FitzHigham, proudly, ‘with the shower. It sucked up water from below.’ At this, a grey-haired man queuing alongside leaned into our conversation. ‘But that would be salt water?’ he said.
‘Indeed!’ said FitzHigham. ‘You must be a plumber?’ He wasn’t a plumber. He was David Gilmour, from Pink Floyd. But the rock god didn’t want to embarrass this strange, bearded man who had sailed from France in a bathtub, so he sort of pretended that he was. And all around us, nobody else said a word. It was as British as anything.
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