the House of Lords and Brexit- A solution

The House of Lord's attempt to wreck Brexit through a series of amendments is causing Mrs May all sorts of grief. There is though an easy solution at hand which has a blue ribbon Constitutional pedigree - just create more peers to vote through the Brexit Bill.

Back in 1911 Asquith - the then Prime Minister - went to the King - George V - and requested him to do just that if the House of Lords rejected his Parliament Bill - which was designed to curtail their powers. The King reluctantly agreed and- when the peers where informed of it - they backed down and passed the Bill.

So what was good for a Liberal government (without co -incidentally, like Mrs May, a working majority. It ruled in coalition with the Labour Party and the Irish Nationalists; plus ca change, plus c'est meme chose ) must surely be good for today's Conservative Government.

So come on Mrs May -get your act together - inform the Lords that either they pass the necessary Brexit legislation without amendment or you will create enough Lords to do it anyway.  As an added bonus may I put my hat in the ring and offer to be one of the new Lords.  Many people assume - because I live in a big house surrounded by acres of land and because we have lived here for some 800 years - that I am a Lord anyway and are very disappointed when I tell them that I am not.  So making me a peer would cheer a lot of people up  as well as helping you to achieve the aim of passing all the necessary legislation through the Lords hassle free. 

The National Trust - & Mrs McGrady the DG

Two of my least favourite phrases are 'reaching out' and the 'the need to be relevant.'  So it was dispiriting to hear the new Director General of the National Trust trot out both of them in a BBC interview.

Here is Mrs McGrady in full flow:

"I want to reach more people, and more people live in urban areas. The days of walking into one of our beautiful houses and saying that a family lived here, that's not going to do it

We need to think of what's relevant -why would someone in the middle of Birmingham say that's interesting. What is it in Birmingham that they would get more interest from? "

Well actually that's an easy question to answer. Just at the moment the good citizens of Birmingham -or a least a sizeable majority of them -are praying that Aston Villa wins promotion to the Premier League and that their other team, Birmingham City, avoids relegation to League One.  So perhaps, if she is serious about 'reaching out' and being 'relevant to urban people' she ought to -seriously -consider spending some of the National Trust's £600 million annual income on sponsoring a football team -like Birmingham City -who -judging by their performance this year -are urgently in need of a cash injection.

But actually why does she want to 'reach out' and why 'be relevant?'  Surely the whole point about the National Trust is that it's success was built on NOT BEING RELEVANT. So, when big houses were being pulled down and no one thought they had any future in the 'relevant' modern post war world the National Trust stepped in and saved them and their contents for future generations. Equally when the coastline was being raped and pillaged with caravan parks and bungalow developers (for -I am afraid to say -urban people) the National Trust stepped into the breach and bought and saved many miles of coastline.

So-learning from the past -if I was Mrs McGrady I might just ask myself the opposite question to the one she has posed.  What is irrelevant -or thought to be so -in modern society?  Well here is a thought for her -Pride in British History.  In it's ownership are many houses which are intrinsically linked to many of the great names of British history. So let's celebrate their contribution to our and the world's culture and stop making grovelling apologises for their occasional lapses into behaviour which today would be unacceptable.

BBC -Salaries & 'Gender in balance'

I am bored by the whinging females at the BBC going on about 'gender inbalance' in their salary levels compared to their male colleagues. Get a Life or -perhaps more pertinently -Get a Better Agent.

Whenever I have done any TV work the first thing I say when I am contacted is - 'That's very interesting - do you mind talking to my agent?" Why? Because I haven't a clue about what the 'going  rate' is for a job but my agent has. Also - though I have many qualities I also have many weaknesses and one of them is - I am a lousy negotiator for myself.

So I leave the sordid subject of monetary remuneration to my agent and naturally she takes- and fully deserves - her fee. But I always feel that actually she cost me nothing as I am quite convinced that the extra payment she extracts more than covers her cost.

On the same issue though I am also a license fee payers as is everyone else in this country. Frankly that means I want the BBC to pay as little as possible for the 'talent' as us TV performers are called. If they can get away with paying someone less than someone else doing an equivalent job - well good for them.  Personally though I am boggled by what some of the 'Talent' are pulling in. Is that old wind bag John Humphries really worth £600,000 + a year - I think not as for Jonathan Ross -pass the sick bag 

Winter Flu epidemic

"Winter Flu Plunges Hospitals into Chaos" reads the banner headline. But why does "Winter Flu" cause the Health Service to collapse?  If I have flu I go to bed. It is that simple. I make myself a 'hot toddy' - recipe as follows:

Pour a generous measure of whisky (probably equivalent to a quadruple measure) into a glass - add water -then pour mixture into saucepan - then add generous quantity of lemon juice - a spoonful of honey and sprinkle in some cloves. Put on the stove - stir it and -when it boils pour into a big mug and retire to bed.

Drink that and you fall instantly asleep and wake up on the mend. It is that simple.

Instead the modern 'snowflakes' rush up to the doctor's surgery or - even more brain numbingly stupid to  hospital where they will sit shivering - and getting sicker - for some hours - whilst generously spreading their germs amongst a large section of the population -how selfish and stupid can you be?

The resulting headlines will squeal about lack of NHS funding etc. No - I don't think there is any 'lack of NHS funding' what there is unfortunately is a 'snowflake' population which can't even do simple things like put a plaster on a finger or go to bed with a hot drink without clogging up the arteries of the NHS with their pathetic little medical complaints.       

Nuisance calls -HM Government the worst offender

I live in a big house. The telephone rings and -often as not - I am the best part of 40 yards away. I run for it -I don't want to miss out on a good invitation -or -perhaps an editor wanting me to write a piece. I pick up the receiver- there is a short pause- then a disembodied female voice starts to say : "We are calling you to tell you about a new government .." I scream down the telephone, but it is no good as this, of course, is a recorded voice.

How do I stop these nuisance calls from the government? Why can't they just write a letter like they used too? One day -inevitably - as I rush to pick up the telephone - I will trip over the dog or have a seizure. There must surely be a way to silence this ghastly woman and her message, if anybody knows how too please let me know before I do myself and injury.

Harvey Wallenstein

Who or what is Harvey Wallenstein? Till a week ago I had never heard of him nor  - at a rough guess-  had 99.9999% of the population of the UK so why have we had his repulsive features spread over even the quality press.  Honestly I don't know. Apparently he is a top Hollywood film producer and is, by all accounts, a sexual predator. Having been brought up on such salacious reads as the Carpet Baggers  and Valley of the Dolls I thought such behaviour by Hollywood film moguls was par for the course so can't help wondering what all the fuss is about.

Of course the real joke is our Harvey was  a 'right on' member of the 'liberal' establishment. donating money to Hillary Clinton's campaign  and raising many millions for the Democrats over the last twenty odd years. Don't you love it when a full on member of the 'liberal establishment' is found with his trousers down. 

Now we read that Harvey has gone into a clinic to have his 'sex addiction' treated. I can't help wondering how you treat 'sex addiction.'  Do clinics - as public schools allegedly used to - pop Bromide in patients tea in the morning in order to calm natural urges.  In fact an old fashioned English Public School regime might be just the thing for Harvey.  An early morning run, in just a pair of shorts, followed by a cold shower should cool his ardour. Follow that up with nearly inedible food and compulsory games he might lose some weight as well. What though if he misbehaved?  Would Harvey relish receiving six of the best on his voluminous bare behind or would he screech like Billy Bunter did when beaten?  Yes, I think I can safely say that if Harvey attended my specialist clinic for sex addicts he would  emerge as a very different person, possibly even a better one.     

Paying for a 'hard' Brexit

Talk about a row over nothing. One the one hand there is that arch weasel Hammond saying that he has 'not put any money aside' to pay for a 'hard Brexit' and then there is the Prime Minister seemingly contradicting him. The truth is that we don't have to put any money aside to pay for a 'hard Breixt' because if that happens we certainly won't be paying Europe anything like the £30 billion plus they are demanding from us - not to mention our annual membership 'fee' of £13 billion.  In other words we will have simply oodles of money to help smooth the path of leaving Europe.

But all this talk of 'hard or 'soft' Brexit is so much eyewash. The truth is that a 'hard' Brexit will happen. It is simply a matter of mathematics. Twenty seven countries will have to agree the terms of a 'soft Brexit.'  Can you imagine how difficult it will be to get all twenty seven to agree on something so contentious and momentous. Each country will have a particular axe to grind. Spain will want access to our fishing grounds as will France and the Netherlands. Poland, Roumania and Bulgaria will want a special deal for their citizens in the UK ,Germany will want to ply the part of Miss Whiplash and give us 'six of the best' before allowing us to leave and so on.  In other words what is being played out by the Mrs May and her acolytes is a charade designed to show the 'Remainers' in her party and in the country at large that she has really tried to do a fair deal but it is the hard liners on the other side of the Channel who by demanding impossible conditions have made it imposible