Wootton Bassett and the British way of mourning

There is something extraordinarily moving, and peculiarly British, in the act of remembrance to fallen British soldiers that has grown up in the small town of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire – all the more remarkable because it is entirely spontaneous and unplanned.

Every time a funeral cortege passes through en route from nearby RAF Lyneham, where the bodies are repatriated, the entire town comes to a standstill.

The church bell tolls and people line the kerb, with local British Legion members to the fore. They salute or bow their heads in silent tribute to young men and women who have given their lives fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq.

There is little fuss or formality, and certainly no master of ceremonies or leader, just simple dignity and a touching act of remembrance.

It started by accident two years ago when a cortege just happened to coincide with the monthly meeting of the Royal British Legion whose members decided on the spur of the moment to pay their respects.

Since then the event has grown and recently more than 5,000 have been known to turn up in tribute.

The exceptional nature of this phenomenon was brought home to me this week by a photograph taken in Wootton Bassett as the hearses containing the coffins of Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond passed through the town.

The British Legionnaires are prominent in the picture, as they should be, and there is also a smattering of civic dignitaries and one of two uniformed servicemen and women.

But the scene away from the crowded kerbside in the quieter parts of the town is no less striking. People have spilled from offices, shops and even the pubs into the street.

A pensioner stands with a bag of groceries at her feet, a young mum with a babe in arms, a teenager only a few years younger than the young trooper in the coffin, a smartly dressed young woman on the steps of the estate agency where she probably works – all silent with heads bowed.

It says more about the unshowy patriotism of ordinary Britons and of the gratitude and affection in which our armed forces are held than any number of more formal ceremonies.

There is talk of the town being awarded the George Cross, as the island of Malta was for its bravery in World War II, and a move to rename the high street the “Highway of Heroes”, but locals will have none of it. They are happy with their simple show of respect.

The last thing they want is for some political leader to turn up - with a poppy wreath paid for on expenses - to milk the occasion for all that it’s worth.

Sadly the people of the town have been busy with their tributes recently – seven British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in a week.

I hope the respect shown by ordinary people is some small consolation to the grieving families.

One man who couldn’t be there left a message: “Please tell the people of Wootton Bassett that each one who stands to honour the fallen has a thousand more of us standing unseen at their shoulder.”

RIP wacko Jacko

Given Michael Jackson’s unsavoury reputation when it comes to pre-pubescent boys, who in heaven’s name decided it was a good idea to ask 12-year-old Shaheen Jafargholi to sing at his memorial?

Proof that Hollywood just isn’t in another country – it’s on another planet.

The public outpouring of grief – not least in the UK – over Jackson’s death was both bewildering and slightly creepy, as were similar scenes after the death of Princess Diana and Jade Goody.

The nadir of the memorial was when the star’s 11-year-old daughter, Paris, was hauled on stage, a microphone thrust in her face, only for her to break down in sobs.

The poor child should be allowed to grieve in peace.

Switch on sat-hav; switch off brain

When did Britain become a nation of sat-nav obsessives?

I’m as fond of electronic gadgets as the next man who has never quite grown out of toys, but this particular fad has crept up on me unawares.

There was a time only a few years ago when motorists would think nothing of driving for hundreds of miles in unfamiliar territory armed with little more than a £6.99 road map.

Now it seems many drivers are incapable of popping down to the local shop without switching on an infernal – and expensive - machine to tell them how to get there.

It is all part of the infantalisation of the British public. People are increasingly incapable of getting anything done without detailed instructions from above – whether it be nannying from Whitehall or a satellite circling the earth to tell them where to go.

For example I witnessed an extraordinary scene close to my home recently. There is a short cut – essentially a rat run – that takes you from the outskirts, across the canal, alongside an old cotton spinning mill and into the centre of town in double quick time.

But for almost three years the road has been closed because the mill is being converted into luxury apartments – but no one has told the sat-nav system.

So on my walks down by the canal I regularly see motorists screech to a halt at the road closed sign, mouth an obscenity at the sat-nav before reversing and heading off back the way they came.

But this one particular guy wasn’t so easily put off. He slalomed past two “Road Closed Ahead” signs and sped over the narrow swing bridge across the canal before slamming on his brakes in front of a steel barrier completely blocking the road.

By now a sign as big as a king size bed reading “ROAD CLOSED” filled his windscreen.

He frowned, looked at the sign, then the sat-nav and then back to the sign. He saw me looking at him and opened the window with a look of complete bewilderment.

“The road is closed to traffic”, I said helpfully.

“Sat-nav,” he replied shaking his head.

“Yes, I know your sat-nav says you can go down there, but it’s wrong. The road’s closed.”

“Sat-nav,” he said again pointing to the device on the dashboard.

Then something incredible happened. The sat-nav was telling him to drive forwards; his eyes were telling him that was impossible. Given the choice between the two he decided to believe the gadget over his own senses. He put the car into first gear, released the handbrake and moved forwards.

It was as if he expected the steel barrier and the road closed sign to disappear like a mirage once he got closer to it. After all the sat-nav couldn’t possibly be wrong could it? His bumper touched the barrier and the corrugated steel groaned as he inched ahead.

By this point a small crowd had gathered on the canal bank to look on in amazement.

I wondered if he was going to write off his car by crashing through the barrier, but eventually he stopped and screamed at the sat-nav: “I can’t bloody well go any further forward!”

He then slammed the car into reverse, shot back over the bridge at speed and then roared off, smoke coming from the tyres, as the audience clapped and waved.

You may think this farfetched – but it is far from unusual. Earlier this year a 43-year-old from Doncaster drove his BMW down a steep, mountain path near Todmorden because his sat-nav insisted it was a road. He only stopped when he hit a wire fence leaving his car teetering over a cliff edge.

And drivers obeying their sat-navs to get from Swaledale to Wensleydale regularly get stuck on a steep, twisty track near a village – appropriately called Crackpot – and have to be rescued by local farmers.

The moral is not to put too much trust in technology, which will always, eventually, go wrong.

And here’s a slogan that applies to many modern-day drivers: “Switch on sat-nav; switch off brain.”

BBC secrecy over stars' salaries

Should the public have a right to know how the money raised is taxes is spent?

Well, according to senior managers at the BBC, it depends on who is spending it.

When MPs are trousering enormous amounts in expenses for everything from non-existent mortgages to a 1p mobile phone bill, then of course the BBC insists on our right to know.

Indeed po-faced star presenters have been known to offer sanctimonious lectures to elected politicians over their lavish lifestyles and the folly of “redacting” vital information from the public.

But closer to home when it comes to the salaries of BBC stars the story changes dramatically.

Although the BBC has agreed to reveal the salaries of 100 senior executives and the total amount spent on what it likes to call “talent”, it is refusing to reveal the money paid to individual stars.

So after all the fine words about transparency and accountability over the use of public money, the licence fee-funded BBC has decided that old-fashioned secrecy is justified when it comes to its own affairs.

Director general Mark Thompson’s excuse for this policy is risible: "There's a real danger that talent would migrate to broadcasters where confidential information about how much they are paid will not be disclosed.”

Oh pull the other one! According to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee BBC radio presenters are paid more than twice what their equivalents on commercial stations can expect.

Are they really going to take a 50% pay cut if the information is disclosed? If so we taxpayers should wave them a happy farewell. There’s plenty more where they came from. Playing records on the radio isn’t exactly a demanding task.

As yourself honestly would anyone really miss £6-million-a-year Jonathan Ross if he was pensioned off to the graveyard shift on Choice FM. No, I don’t think so either.

There are plenty of bright, engaging presenters prepared to do the job for a tenth of the bloated salaries these over-paid clowns are paid.

And of course Mr Thompson’s argument could equally be used to keep the salaries and expenses of BBC executives secret too. Aren’t all the bosses going to migrate to the commercial sector because their confidentiality has been compromised? Of course not.

Like the highly paid stars, they know when they are onto a good thing.

The BBC receives £3.4 billion a year from the licence fee, yet has become badly disconnected with the public who pay the bill – as the Jonathan Ross-Andrew Sachs affair clearly demonstrated.

The only way to get the public back on side is by complete honest and transparency – not by hiding dirty little secrets away.

And the next time the presenters climb are tempted to be sanctimonious they should remember that what’s sauce for the politician’s goose is also sauce for the BBC’s gander.

Immigration shambles damages genuine refugees

Nothing better illustrates the shambles into which government policy on refugees has disintegrated than the news that a £1 million scheme to help failed asylum seekers return home has resulted in just one family leaving the UK.

The pilot scheme in Kent ran for less than a year and was "mismanaged from start to finish" according to a report published this week by The Children's Society.

Let’s get one thing clear. Free democracies such as the UK have an obligation to help genuine refugees from less civilised parts of the world who are persecuted for their race, religion or political beliefs.

Indeed our country has a long and proud record of doing precisely that – from the Huguenots, the Kindertransport and the Ugandan Asians.

Those arrivals have worked hard to integrate with and contribute to the host community and have immeasurably enriched British life as a result.

The problem with the government’s open-doors approach to immigration over the last 12 years is that it has undermined the case of the genuine refugee.

It no longer mattered whether arrivals were genuinely fleeing persecution, or even if they were prepared to obey British laws, they were welcomed anyway.

And once here, as the Kent pilot scheme demonstrates, there is little chance they will ever leave.

Brave Iranian protesters are on their own

One tiny consolation as the bloody drama unfolds in Iran is that there can no longer be any doubt that the country’s leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a deranged monster.

For years “progressive” apologists in the West have denounced criticism of Ahmadinejad as a sinister neo-con plot, insisting for example that he didn’t really mean it when he repeatedly threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”.

Now as scenes of terrible slaughter of innocent democracy protesters in Tehran and other Iranian cities reach our television screens every evening, at least we know what we are up against.

Forget the strutting plastic gauleiters of the BNP – this is real fascism in action.

Many on the Left are compromised in their response to the Iranian crisis by their decision to ally themselves to racists, homophobes and misogynists simply because they all share a visceral anti-Americanism.

The alliance between so-called “progressives” and Islamo-fascists is the most shameful political manoeuvre since the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

Neither can the courageous protesters in Iran expect much help from President Barack Obama, who has proved too timid or frightened to offer much more than a peep of protest.

Is this the man the Left promised us would restore America’s moral authority?

Love him or hate him, at least George Bush had the courage of his convictions.

So I’m afraid the people of Iran battling for liberty and democracy are very much on their own in their struggle against a brutal and ruthless regime.

I’d love to be proved wrong, but I don’t rate their chances very highly.

The mediaeval bigots who run Iran, like similar tyrannies in North Korea and Zimbabwe, would rather massacre their own people than loosen their grip on power.

Already there are reports of the Iranian regime using Palestinian terrorists from Hamas and Hezbollah to suppress the protests. And the Revolutionary Guards will turn their guns on the people if ordered to do so.

All this is bad news for Iran, but also bad news for its neighbours and the rest of the world too.

And who now can seriously question Israel’s right to defend itself against an unstable regime determined to get hold of nuclear weapons?

Having seen what Ahmadinejad and his cronies are prepared to do to fellow Muslims, is there much doubt what they’d do to the Jews given half the chance?

Just Do It!

Some 17-year-olds struggle to get out of bed before mid-afternoon and then spend the rest of the day jabbing at a games console with their thumbs, pausing only to see if the food fairy has delivered a pizza to the freezer.

Not so schoolboy Mike Perham who is aiming to become the youngest person to sail single-handedly around the world in his 50ft yacht, Totallymoney.com.

Hundreds of miles off the South American coast it looked as though his quest was doomed to failure when ropes became tangled in his rudders making it impossible for him to steer.

After failing to pull the ropes clear, the teenager decided there was only one solution – he attached himself to a line, jumped into the chilly Pacific and repeatedly dived under the boat.

After 40 minutes of cutting with a knife, he finally cleared the problem, climbed back onto the boat and continued his journey.

I suspect young Mike has had to do a lot of growing up in the last few weeks. He is also learning lessons in problem solving, self-reliance and determination that he probably wouldn’t get in school.

And isn’t it marvellous that, despite our increasingly risk-averse culture, this young man has been allowed to push himself to the absolute limits in this way.

No nannying, no hand-holding, no suing for compensation, no filling out endless risk assessment forms. Instead, as the old sportswear advert used to say – Just Do It!

We should be grateful that the massed ranks of Clipboard Men from the Health and Safety Executive don’t operate patrols in the Pacific – or the poor lad would never get home.

EU doomed by lack of accountability

If there is one statistic that should give Euro-enthusiasts pause for thought from the elections it's this – across Europe voter turnout plummeted to just 43%, the lowest figure for 30 years.

In the UK the figure was even lower at just over 30% and in some of the newer member states fewer than one in five adults bothered casting a vote.

Voters who did express a preference are increasingly turning to Euro-sceptic parties – a trend not exclusive to the UK.

So why the marked lack of enthusiasm for the great European project? You might think that this would be the burning issue in Brussels and Strasbourg in the light of last week’s results; that the continent’s finest minds are busy analysing ways of addressing the concerns of ordinary people and the EU’s growing lack of democratic legitimacy.

If so, you’d be wrong. They are determined to plough on regardless of the expressed wishes of those they are supposed to represent. They couldn’t care less what you think.

Here for example is a classic example of denial in the face of established facts from European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso: "Overall, the results are an undeniable victory for those parties and candidates that support the European project.”

I know Brussels is in another country, but it appears Mr Barroso is living on another planet.

Our European masters seem determined to foist upon us a United States of Europe regardless of whether that’s what the people across the continent actually want.

Conservative MP Daniel Hannan, who knows the EU better than most, put it aptly when he wrote: “(In Brussels) public opinion is seen as an obstacle to be overcome, not a reason to change course.”

And that is why people don’t vote – because it is doesn’t make any difference. The Euro-elite are going to press ahead whatever we say.

Take for example France and Holland – two of the most pro-EU countries in Europe – which both emphatically voted against the proposed European Constitution.

Instead of addressing the people’s concerns, the Commission simply changed the name to the “Lisbon Treaty” and ignored the Dutch and French votes.

Across Europe people were denied a say. They dared not ask us the question because they feared the answer they would get. That is why the Labour government – supported by the Lib Dems – reneged on a promise to give the British people a referendum.

Only in Ireland – where the constitution required a referendum – was a vote held, and again the decision was a decisive ‘no’. According to the rules that should be the end of the matter. If one member state rejects the Treaty, it fails.

But instead come the autumn the Irish will be forced to vote again – and possibly again, and again, and again, until they are bullied into submission and finally vote the way their masters instruct them.

And this is supposed to be democracy?

This lack of accountability is a canker at the heart of the EU that, if not cut out, will eventually destroy it.

Unless Europe becomes more democratic, transparent and responsive to the needs of voters, it is doomed.

As tough as old boots

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett was trampled by cow while trying to protect his guide dog, Sadie, during a walk in the Peak District last Saturday.

You might think after such a nasty experience, in which he broke a rib, the 62-year-old might take it easy for a few days to recover.

But not a bit of it. You don’t reach one of the highest offices of state – and overcome a major disability - without a big helping of courage and resilience.

And once again Mr Blunkett demonstrated that they sure make them tough in Sheffield.

By Sunday he was cracking jokes about his ordeal, and despite his painful injuries he attended a crucial meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party the following day.

What a trouper!

Those Top Ten MPs' expenses in full

Britain may have become a laughing stock, with an economy mired in unsustainable debt and a Prime Minister who can’t even muster enough cabinet members for a decent reshuffle.

But in one area of human endeavour we lead the world. When it comes to the creative use of expenses – and devising outlandish and hilarious excuses when caught out – our MPs are second to no none.

If they handed out medals for whingeing self-pity, a refusal to accept responsibility and a determination to shift the blame onto anyone but themselves, our dishonourable members would win gold every time.

You can’t help wondering that if our elected representatives diverted a fraction of the time and effort they devote to lining their own pockets to actually running the country, we might not find ourselves in the current mess.

So here in no particular order are my Top Ten of MP’s excuses, loosely based on actual comments they’ve made in recent weeks.

1. It is not true – all the newspapers are lying.

2. OK, so perhaps it is ‘true’ – whatever that means - but all my claims were made entirely within the rules.

3. OK, so perhaps there were one or two tiny, technical breaches of the rules due to inadvertent accounting errors, for which my secretary sincerely apologised just before I sacked her.

4. The Commons fees office made me do it. Blame them, not me.

5. Figures are not my strong point. Capital gains tax – what’s that?

6. You’re just jealous because I own a large house.

7. The system is rotten and the fact I took full advantage of it simply demonstrates the urgent need for reform. You lot should be grateful.

8. When you own so many homes, it is hard to remember which one is your principal residence.

9. OK, so I’ve now paid the money back. Can we draw a line under this and move on?

10. It’s a witch hunt! My constituents are bullying me over a measly £171,000 and it is affecting my health. You’ll end up putting off people like me standing for public office.

Deep in the Downing Street bunker

Deep in the Downing Street bunker the once great leader is surrounded by his last loyal acolytes, reduced to pushing non-existent divisions around an electoral map of Britain.

Brown: “I command the Labour voters of Salford (jabbing a finger on the map) punish that traitorous little chipmunk Hazel Blears!”

Corporal Balls-up: “Good idea, great leader. But … er … there’s a slight problem.”

Brown: “Come on – out with it!”

Balls-up: “Er…well there are no Labour voters in Salford anymore – they have all deserted for Ukip, the Greens and the BNP.”

Brown: “What! No Labour voters left in working class Salford! I can’t believe it! Whose fault is that?

Balls-up: “Er…absolutely no idea sir.”

Brown: “Why doesn’t anyone obey my orders anymore? Has that useless pillock Darling been sacked yet?”

Sergeant Mini Cooper: “We can’t find him to tell him, sir, despite extensive searches of at least four of his second homes.”

Brown: “What about Blair. Surely he can help us in our hour of need?”

Balls-up: “We tried his number, sir, but all we hear is hysterical laughing. There must be something wrong with the line.”

Then a call comes through that sends Mini Cooper white with shock. She finally realises the game is up. She extends the receiver with a trembling hand.

Mini Cooper: “Bad news I’m afraid, sir. It’s Susan Boyle ringing from the Priory. She wants to know how you are.”

Lessons from the tragedy that is North Korea

For more than 50 years the Korean peninsula has been the subject of a unique experiment – communist and capitalist systems of government existing side by side in a divided country.

The resulting contrast couldn’t be starker. The capitalist south is a prosperous multi-party democracy, with a thriving free press and reputation for exporting innovative electronic goods and cars around the world.

In the poverty stricken communist north the people starve under the yoke of a totalitarian personality cult dependent on international aid, the regime is notorious for its human rights abuses and there are an estimated 200,000 political prisoners.

Proof - if any were needed - of the truth in Winston Churchill’s famous quote that “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”.

But this isn’t just an academic exercise. Like Iran, North Korea is yet another failed state that poses a grave threat to world security.

This week the communist regime repudiated the armistice that has kept an uneasy peace since 1953 and threatened to attack US and North Korean ships that try to intercept its vessels to stop the transport of weapons of mass destruction.

What is worse is that North Korea is a nuclear armed state with a tyrannical leader - Kim Jong-il – who is just crazy enough to use nukes if he feels his grip on power may be loosening.

The current crisis was sparked earlier this week when North Korea tested a nuclear warhead the size of the Hiroshima bomb, and then followed up this provocative move by test firing a number of missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

It is hard to see how the West can deal with this threat. Kim Jong-il cares nothing for his own people. All that matters to him is his ambition to pass on the leadership he inherited from his father to his twenty-five year old son, Kim Jong-un.

The dynasty would see the country – and much of the region – destroyed in a nuclear conflagration rather than give up power.

The key to a peaceful resolution to this crisis lies with China, the one country with both influence and power in the secretive country and up to now North Korea’s staunchest supporter.

One key development is that the North’s latest nuclear weapons put not only South Korea within range, but China too.

One good sign was that, unusually, both China and Russia condemned the latest nuclear test. Our best hope is that China finally loses patience with its client state and moves to topple the Kim regime.

And there is a lesson to be learned in our dealings with Iran – we must do everything possible to stop them getting nukes in the first place.

£200 for a loaf of bread?

A survey this week demonstrated why you shouldn’t trust a teenager with the weekly shop.

The Young Enterprise poll of 1,000 12 to 19 year olds showed the vast majority hadn’t a clue about basic money matters, including the cost of basic household goods.

For example guesses as to the cost of a loaf of bread ranged from £200 to a penny, with the average coming in at £4.31.

One thought half a dozen eggs would cost £500, with £2.41 the average guess.
They weren’t much better with house prices, with the average estimate coming to a stonking £1.2 million.

They were much more clued up when it comes to the cost of the latest electronic gadgetry - on average they estimated the cost of an iPod Nano at £105 - it usually retails at around £100.

The reason for this ignorance, I suspect, is teenagers don’t often shop for food. After all eggs appear in the fridge, and bread in the larder, as if by some curious magic, just as clothes wash themselves and bedrooms are tidied by some unseen, miraculous force.

When the fateful day arrives when they have to start spending their own hard earned cash to feed themselves, they will suddenly develop a much keener sense of the cost of living.

Gurkhas show that it's character that matters not colour

The government reels from yet another self inflicted wound – this time the humiliating U-turn over Gurkha settlement rights – lost, defeated, demoralised and utterly bewildered.

They must be asking themselves how they got this one so badly wrong.

Part of the answer lies in the present administration’s serial incompetence for which it has become justly infamous.

But there is another more interesting and revealing reason - and that is the Left’s obsession with race.

According to leftist orthodoxy, anyone who objected to Labour’s open-doors immigration policy over the last 12 years was inherently racist.

This was insulting and wrong, but it also made Labour politicians entirely unable to understand the genuine concerns of ordinary people over immigration - and eventually the furore over the Gurkhas.

You could almost hear the cogs grinding as they tried to work out how all these unreconstructed bigots who opposed unlimited immigration could possibly be the same people who were campaigning so hard for the rights of brown-skinned Gurkhas from the Third World.

Well here’s a clue guys – it has absolutely nothing to do with race.

What we are dealing with here is the famous – and deliciously old fashioned – British sense of fair play.

Time and again the inhabitants of this country have demonstrated that if immigrants are prepared to work hard, obey the law and contribute to society, they will be welcome – regardless of race or religion.

That’s why the Gurkhas – who have clearly shown their love of this country through valiant service in our armed forces – garnered so much support.

It also explains why, in sharp contrast to our European neighbours, anti-Semitism has never taken root in the UK - apart from an Islamist and extreme left and right fringe.

Although it sticks in the craw of the Left, the simple truth is that the UK is far and away the most tolerant country in Europe – just ask any black Briton unfortunate enough to go on holiday to France or Germany.

This is what Labour failed to grasp. Instead they decided that to atone for our imperialist past we had a duty to accept without limit killers, child molesters and rapists from the four corners of the world.

So we ended up with a crazy situation whereby Islamist preachers were welcomed here to spew hatred while living on benefits, but hard-working, loyal Gurkhas were turned away.

In its wisdom the great British public decided that this wasn’t fair and forced the Labour government to climb down.

The campaign for justice for the Gurkhas has helped realise Martin Luther King’s famous dream that people “will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”.

Laughing behind your bobby's helmet

Who would have thought the boys in blue had such a wicked sense of humour?

When senior officers at West Yorkshire Police asked staff how many of them were planning or had undergone a sex change, about 300 or just under 6.5%, answered yes.

The force concluded that the figures were so high that they must be wrong and that people did not understand the question. They clearly don’t know when their legs are being pulled.

Of course the correct answer to the question is: “It is none of your bloody business!” The public don’t care what gender, race or sexual orientation a police officer is as long as he/she/whatever catches the criminals that make many lives a misery. It shouldn’t matter to senior officers either.

What the survey results do demonstrate however is that there are a large number disheartened rank and file officers prepared to make a protest against a rotten police culture that puts ticking boxes against diversity targets ahead of protecting the public.

Labour's failure on poverty

Amid the a welter of jaw dropping figures released this week on MPs’ expenses there is a danger of overlooking another hugely significant statistic published about people at the other end of the income scale.

According to data compiled by the Department of Work and Pensions, deprivation and poverty in the UK rose for the third successive year in 2007-08, with the result that Britain is today a more unequal country than at any time since records began in the early 1960s.

At the end of Labour’s 11th year in power, income inequality – the gap between rich and poor – was wider than at any time during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.

It is worth pausing for a moment to let the significance of that last point to sink in. Baroness Thatcher, widely reviled on the left as a flinty-hearted capitalist harridan, in fact did more for the working classes than all the post-war Labour governments put together.

Simply by allowing the sale of council houses to their occupiers and selling shares in nationalised industries to their customers, Thatcher brought about a dramatic shift in wealth towards working people that has not been matched before or since.

Labour in contrast made alleviating poverty and inequality a central tenet of its policy, and it is only fair they are judged on this record. Child poverty was supposed to be halved by 2010 and abolished entirely by 2020 – targets that look hopelessly optimistic in the current economic climate.

Labour set out to do this not by encouraging hard work and thrift, as Thatcher did, but by interfering in people’s lives with doomed attempts at social engineering.

The result by any measure has been an unmitigated disaster. Rather than alleviating poverty and inequality, Labour has in fact increased them. At the same time they have frittered away the hard won prosperity of the Thatcher years and left Britain as an economic basket case, in much the same dismal state as when they were last in power.

In fact the real beneficiaries of Labour’s years in power have been the comfortably-off middle classes who were recruited in their hundreds of thousands into none-jobs in the public sector. As for the poor, they were better off under Thatcher!

Why was this so? Certainly, there were no shortages of good intentions – Labour has plenty of those. There was clearly a degree of managerial incompetence – the inability of the sort of clever, posh, inexperienced people who dominate Labour cabinets, to actually get anything done.

But the real reason is one of political philosophy. Labour came into power believing that there was no problem in society that couldn’t be solved by more government interference and taxpayers money.

So whereas Thatcher encouraged self reliance, innovation and entrepreneurship, Blair and Brown have given us a target-driven culture of central control, higher taxes, benefits dependency and endless attempts to micro-manage the lives of ordinary citizens.

Governments cannot impose equality, because if people are left to their own devices there will always be those who are cleverer, more talented, more hard working or just plain luckier than others.

And you certainly can’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.

At least Labour’s attempt to abolish poverty over the last 12 years has provided an object lesson in the limitations of state power.

Why pay twice for your train seat?

Train services in the UK are frequently overcrowded and it is often impossible to find a seat.

You might think that train companies would respond to this problem in a positive manner – perhaps by putting on sufficient carriages on busy services to ensure that no paying customer has to stand.

But not National Express – instead it is to charge an extra £5 per return journey to reserve a seat.

This is little more than a poorly disguised price rise and an insult to hard-pressed commuters.

And remember the next time you are forced to stand, with a couple of dozen other passengers crammed on a train – if they transported cattle like that, animal rights protesters would be chaining themselves to the rails.