Ever since I began my career in journalism as Uncle Tom, editor of Uncle Tom's Corner, and organiser of Uncle Tom's Brigade, which was nowhere near as neo-fascist as it sounds, I've had good reason to hate meetings.
As well as making me run the children's page, the editor of the Suttton Coldfield News would send me into Warwickshire to cover parish council meetings. In theory this should have been a simple task. Parish councils only have the power to decide about footpaths and street lighting. Their meetings should be over in minutes. But at some point in the 1960s a lunatic at the Department of the Environment decided that parish councils should be able to offer their opinions on planning applications. Only their opinions, mind you. They had no power to decide whether planning applications should go ahead. But this small gesture towards consultation created an egotistical monster in village halls across England. Parish councillors seized their chance to repay favours or pursue vendettas or just enjoy the sounds of their own voices as they went on for hours and hours about the rights and wrongs of the extension at Bunny Rabbit Farm.
And as the clock dragged round the dial and I looked out of the window and saw the last bus to Birmingham about to depart, I felt like grabbing them by the lapels and screaming: 'Why do you babble so? Nothing you say here has the smallest practical effect. Can't you see that? Don't you know that your meetings are a wanton waste of our few, precious years on earth?'
That feeling has never left me.
Years ago an executive said at his retirement party that his career at the Observer had been a 25-year meeting punctuated by a weekly paper. I'm luckier than that. I only have to go to the Wednesday politics meeting. The worst of it is that the Wednesday politics meeting is, naturally enough, on a Wednesday, when I usually don't have the faintest idea what I'm going to be writing about. It's not wise to say this to the editor when he fixes you with a piercing gaze and asks you to make a contribution. Usually I mumble something or other..
This week I have two something or others to mumble. 1. I was in the East End at the weekend watching the battle between Oona King and George Galloway. I remain astonished by the way the liberal-left allowed itself to be led by a man who saluted the 'courage' of a fascist dictator and will offer a piece on how the remnants of the anti-war movement have given up on all the traditions of the left and are fighting an openly communalist campaign. 2. Alternatively, I have had a tip off that Michael Howard is planning to smuggle colonies of lepers into key East Midland marginals and release them the week before polling. Can this be true? Why would he do it?
