Low value
Michael Vestey
ing out this level of premium, grade A, number one arse?'
The answer, I should have realised, is that there's no point in trying to judge the Stones on anything they ever did past about 'Exile On Mainstream Street'. If you do, they barely figure in the rock 'n' roll pantheon. If, on the other hand, you judge them on their achievements between the early Sixties and the early Seventies, well, then, even the Beatles can barely touch them.
Was there ever a duo cooler than Mick 'n' Keel? Was there ever a rock star sexier than Jagger or one who managed to ingest more drugs — and survive — than Richards? And they wrote 'Paint It Black', 'You Can't Always Get What You Want', 'Ruby Tuesday' and 'As Tears Go By'. And they killed all those butterflies so movingly and poetically in Hyde Park. And they had Marianne Faithful! and Anita Pallenberg. And they had Brian Jones's swimming pool and the 'Mars Bar' drugs bust. And the 'Who Breaks A Butterfly On A Wheel' editorial and the 'Would You Let Your Daughter Go With A Rolling Stone' headline. And Altamont. None of which the girlie, peace 'n' love Beatles ever managed, did they?
So even if The One And Only Rolling Stones was a bit of a hagiography, the fulsome tributes by everyone from Ike Turner and John Sessions to Jack White (out of White Stripes) didn't seem remotely overstated. 'They were there at the beginning and they'll be the ones who'll turn the lights out,' said unlikely fan Marc Almond. 'Ladies and gentlemen. That was rock 'n' roll. Thank you and good night.'
I particularly enjoyed Marianne Faithfull's recollections of that legendary drugs bust at Richards's country residence in February 1967. It was the first time any of them had done LSD. 'It was an absolute gas, we had such a laugh I can't tell you.' Unfortunately, when the police burst in later that night, everyone was still tripping and couldn't quite take the process seriously. Richards helped send them on their way by playing Dylan's 'Everybody Must Get Stoned' at full volume. 'This is not a good way to handle a bust,' says Faithful!, who thinks it explains why the police were so keen to prosecute so viciously on the flimsiest of evidence.
This week I finally caught up with Congo's Killing Fields (Channel 4) which I'd recorded while I was away on holiday. Sam Kiley's investigation into the bloodiest conflict since the second world war, which included personal interviews with the leaders of two of the most brutal factions, harrowing testimony from Hema and Lendu survivors of disembowelling and dismemberment, and a truly nail-biting sequence when it seemed that the UN compound in Bunia where Kiley was sheltering was about to be overrun and wiped out, was one of the coolest and bravest pieces of reporting I have ever seen. If it doesn't win every award going, then there's no justice. Hardly anyone I meet knows what the 'European Parliament does. They associate MEPs with a cushy life of high salaries and expense-account lunches. Most people are hard-pushed to name their MEP. I've forgotten the name of the one I voted for. It is, really, a remote institution that cannot possibly represent its constituents in the way that a national parliament does.
Much of this was aired last week in the second of Radio Four's new series of debates, Down With . . . The European Parliament (Wednesday). This week's topic will be Down With . . The Football Association. A Danish eurosceptic MEP, Jens Peter Bonde, explained why he didn't believe in the parliament despite having been a member of it since it began 24 years ago. Arguing in favour of it was a former Conservative MEP, Graham Mather. An audience of MEPs and journalists were also able to contribute.
First, though, a vox pop was broadcast of people in London who were asked if they knew what the parliament did. One woman said, 'I think they spend a lot of money and I think they have a good old time while they're out there.' I can certainly vouch for that as I used to cover the parliament for the BBC when it convened in its hideous architectural scar in Strasbourg for one week a month. I was on lowish BBC expenses not the largesse available to MEPs and I was still able to dine on the finest French food I've ever eaten. The dread of reporting on the parliament for a week was outweighed by the thought of all the nice restaurants one would be going to. All aboard for the Strasbourg sauceboat!
Graham Booth has been a UK Independence party MEP for the South West for only six months but he told the programme that 'we are paid far too much, the expenses are absolutely enormous, we're given perks galore, a free office in Strasbourg, a free office in Brussels where we don't even see the phone bills, we don't know how extravagant we've been and yet there we are, we are doing a job supposedly to represent our constituents in the whole of the South West'. He was just as scathing about the workings of the parliament. 'The voting system is an absolute joke: the leader of each group sits at the front of the chamber and puts a thumb up or down. Members of that group follow that pattern. I feel our value out there is very low.' Seven MEPs for the South West of England represent four and a half million people and he didn't feel they were able to do anything for them. His party wanted all power to be returned to Westminster.
He was surrounded, of course, by MEPs who didn't share his view. Mather opened by saying that no parliament was perfect but it was better to have a European parliament than not have one. It did a worthwhile job and had forced the entire European Commission under Jacques Santer to resign. This is about the only thing anyone can remember about the parliament. It's always trotted out when the parliament tries to justify itself. James Proven, a Conservative MEP, said the parliament had become much more influential and powerful. Diana Wallace, a Lib Dem MEP from Yorkshire, told the programme that her local radio station had asked three people in the street if they could name her. Two were unable to and the third did. 'I regard that as not too bad,' she said, rather pathetically.
Bonde believed that both MEPs and national MPs have 'lost the democracy to Brussels. The core power has moved to secret committees of civil servants. No MEP or MP has influence with those or any information about what is going on. So elected members have lost to bureaucrats.' The party list system that operates in much of Europe didn't help. Stephen Bates, a former European affairs editor of the Guardian, thought that one of the chief democratic problems was 'that many people feel that they can't get the bastards out and that's always a pretty healthy sign of democracy if you feel you can change your members of parliament'. When one MEP dies or leaves the parliament the next person on the list steps up and takes his place. He was sure this was one of the reasons for the rise of political extremism in Europe, 'people find they need to vote as a protest'.
This was a useful programme in that it's not often that the Orwellian absurdities of the European Union are discussed on radio or television, particularly when you consider the extent to which our democratic rights have been transferred to Brussels over the years without us being asked if we wish to relinquish them. It is almost as if they think it's none of our business which is, of course, exactly what they do believe. Most of what you hear on the radio is conducted in terms of newsy party splits — the actual issues are barely touched upon.
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