Monday
I can’t help feeling that giving a TV interview was not the best way for Thomas Markle to start repairing his relationship with his daughter Meghan. Especially not an interview with Piers Morgan, whose only real subject of conversation is the advancement of Piers Morgan. Family breakdowns and reconciliations are generally best dealt with in private rather than being brokered with an untreatable narcissist, and Markle would be better advised to respect his daughter’s decision to break off all ties and hope that in time she may want to renew contact. In any case, you’d also have thought Markle might have been better off waiting until the new year to attempt a rapprochement, as Meghan must be totally stressed out at having to spend lack-of-quality time with her in-laws up at Sandringham. Even by the standards of many family Christmases, the Windsors’ sounds particularly dire. She gets out of having to play Monopoly – the game apparently turns the usual levels of passive aggression within the royal family into outright warfare – but she will almost certainly get roped into the traditional game of bingo. Still, at least she has got herself and Harry out of the Boxing Day massacre. She must be counting the hours till she can get back home.
Tuesday
With the government having pulled the meaningful vote on its Brexit deal that it knew it would lose, parliament has been left to go through the motions during the last week before Christmas in a series of futile gestures. First, Labour put forward a pointless motion of no confidence in the prime minister – only no-confidence motions in the government carry any weight – which the Conservatives understandably ignored. We were then treated to two entirely meaningless emergency Brexit debates, in which the same people gave almost exactly the same speech on successive days and which served no purpose other than to waste three hours of Commons time on each occasion. In between the Commons laid on its very own panto with MPs having a row with each other and the Speaker over whether Jeremy Corbyn muttered “stupid woman” or “stupid people” under his breath about Theresa May. No one was disputing the use of the word “stupid”. That appeared to be a given. While all this displacement activity was going on, Gyula Remes, a 45-year-old homeless Hungarian man, died just yards from the entrance to parliament in a subway at Westminster tube station. He was the second homeless person to die in exactly the same spot in a year. A fund has been started in his memory. The donation page is here, with all money going to charities for homeless people and rough sleepers. You might just manage something the government is currently unable to do and prevent another unnecessary death.
Wednesday
The Christmas party season is well under way in Westminster. The most lavish and well-attended appears to have been Jeremy Hunt’s at the Foreign Office, but the most illuminating has been Matt Hancock’s at the Department of Health. Man-boy Hancock revealed that he has two large pictures of chickens in his office. Part of his mission to embrace his cock within. Labour celebrations have been altogether more low-key. Clive Lewis sent out an email advising guests to bring their own drinks and snacks as he reckoned the booze he was providing would run out in about half an hour. No expense incurred. Keir Starmer’s office bash was cancelled at the last minute when he was sent out to speak in one of the unnecessary emergency Brexit debates. The only invitation I received was to the lobby drinks party hosted by Theresa May at Downing Street, one that I was happy to turn down as it coincided with Spurs’ Carabao Cup quarter-final against Arsenal. The best £10 I have spent on a football ticket for some time. It turns out I made the right decision. Not only did Tottenham win 2-0, but colleagues who did go to the party said it was almost entirely a non-event. The prime minister only stayed at her own party for about 20 minutes. After having several conversations about Strictly Come Dancing that were punctuated with awkward silence, she did a runner leaving the hacks to talk among themselves. Which is when the party really started.
Thursday
According to a new report from the Office for Students, the number of first-class degrees awarded has risen from 16% in 2010-11 to 27% in 2016-17. In many cases, the increases are deemed to be totally inexplicable. At Surrey University the number of firsts has doubled to 50%, while at the University of Bradford the number has tripled to more than 30%. While it could just be that students work harder than they used to – certainly my children took their degrees a lot more seriously than I took mine – the suspicion is that grade inflation has played its part. Who would want to fork out £27k in tuition fees to a university that was notoriously mean in its marking? I was lucky enough to go to university when not only was the tuition free but you got paid a grant for going there, but back then the politics department at Exeter used to make it quite clear no one could possibly be clever enough to be worth a first, and that the best degree anyone could reasonably expect was a 2:1. It would have broken my tutors’ hearts to have given anyone a first. My friend Alex, whom I have known for the best part of 45 years, announced to me that when we first met that he considered himself to be a thoroughly average student and was going to do no more than was required to get a thoroughly average degree. He was as good as his word, attending lectures only intermittently, and coming away blissfully happy with a 2:2. He’s never looked back.
Friday
On the basis that if you don’t ask you don’t get, I’d like to use my last entry before Xmas for a few gift requests. Top of the list – and it’s something we all could probably benefit from – is a government that is capable of governing and an opposition that knows how to oppose. At the moment we seem to have neither and if 2018 has been a rubbish year, then just wait for 2019. On a more personal level there are a couple of things that would improve my life immeasurably. For a long while now I’ve been a collector of first editions and there are many significant gaps in my library. I’ve never even caught a glimpse of any of EF Benson’s first five Mapp and Lucia novels in dust-jackets and my Agatha Christie collection would be immeasurably improved by a copy of Dumb Witness. Not because it was one of her best detective books, but because it had the the most fabulous picture of a dog on the dust-jacket. But top of my wishlist by a long way is access to a private jet. In exactly a week’s time, my daughter and her husband are moving to the US and I am going to miss them dreadfully. Flights to Minneapolis aren’t cheap and Brexit makes an extended visit before the summer a no-no, so the knowledge that I could fly over for the odd long weekend would ease my feelings of loss considerably. Over to you ...
The digested week digested: The Commons’ school panto.
