The Conservatives will have to do better than a desperate housewife

Last night's BBC Question Time panel was a woeful sight. From left we had:

Lembit Opik, whose calls for a "mature debate" sit uncomfortably with his childish publicity-seeking behaviour.

Will Self, the self appointed guru of pessimism, who clearly (erroneously) believes himself intellectually superior to the rest of the human race. Sitting next to Lembit Opik, his face looked almost normal.

Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP and former nurse who appeared to have no real opinions at all as she sought to say almost anything which would get her a bit of applause.

Jim Knight (who?), the Schools Minister, who sat and merrily parroted the script he'd had written for him in an affable but vacant way.

And the awful, horse-faced Esther Rantzen, whose recent time in the jungle appears to have so addled her brain that she thinks Gordon Brown has been a great steward of our economy.

Most depressing, for someone who cherishes the prospect of a new, better government in the near future, was that the Conservatives had seen fit to put forward Nadine Dorries. She was so out of her depth she really needed a snorkel, and she wasn't up against the hottest political opposition, either. It was like listening to one long vox pop from a suburban housewife who had read a Conservative press release, rather than a spokesman for Her Majesty's Opposition. Even Lembit "I'm a Cheeky Boy, look at my Segway" Opik sounded serious by comparison.

Come on, Dave, you can do better than this. At a time when proper Conservatism is more important than it has been for years, we need to hear credible Conservative voices, not token blonde women.

Welcome to Devon

This weekend I went to Budleigh Salterton, near Exmouth for a pretty hectic 48 hours. In this time I was struck be just how friendly and helpful the locals were (with the exception of the staff in the CoOp, who were deeply suspicious of us) and how relaxed the whole place seemed to be. As a Londoner, the following story more or less sums it up.

At the end of the first night, after a rehearsal with the band and a trip to the pub, I was walking back to my hotel. Unfortunately, I was walking back a different way to the way I had driven earlier, and I had taken a wrong turning, and ended up in an unidentifiable residential street - street lighting is sparse. When I realised this, I stopped to get my Sat Nav out of my rucksack, which seemed the sensible thing to do to find out where I was. As I did this, a police car approached. I thought nothing of it - in London, police cars are around all the time. But the policeman (who was alone in the patrol car) stopped and asked me if I was alright and if I knew where I was going. I told him where I was staying and said I was going to check on my Sat Nav (which I had in my hand), so I was fine. He got there first with his and offered me a lift. In fact, he insisted on giving me a lift to my hotel, sympathising with my plight - "it all looks different at night, don't it?". 

A policeman with so little to worry about that he can give a lift to someone who is perfectly capable of finding his own way? That's Budleigh for you.

New info in the sidebar

Courtesy of http://www.conservatives.com/ I now have a widget (to the right of this post) to show me what my current share of the national debt is, updated in real time. It's also your share of the national debt, of course. And everyone else's.

Gordon Brown is a complete idiot

I know this isn't an original sentiment. And I know it may seem like an obvious, if blunt thing to say. But I think on the evidence of recent days and weeks it is so self-evidently true that it needs to be said. I shall explain my reasoning.

First of all, Gordy has lost all sense of proportion. Whenever anything unfortunate happens and is heavily reported in the media, he has now decided that he must promise "change". This means that, in addition to everything else he has got on, he now has to find time to prevent a small child ever being abused by a parent and to prevent anyone ever raping a relative again. This is silly - of course they are hypothetically laudable ambitions, but they are also impossible, and he knows it.

Second of all, El Gordo and his puppet chancellor Alistair "Captain" Darling have decided to sell the whole country down the river because they're determined to be seen to be doing something about the inevitable recession (inevitable, of course, because of their terrible stewardship of the economy). In particular, they have decided to something immensely expensive (knock 2.5% off VAT) which will make no real difference. I know this, because I asked an expert: me. Me, I said, will you now go out and spend more money because Captain Darling has reduced VAT to 15%? No, I replied, it won't make a tiny bit of difference, especially since he has carefully made sure that the fun stuff, like whisky, won't be any cheaper. So why all the extra borrowing to finance it? And why punish those of us who are actually working by putting up National Insurance contributions?

Thirdly, Gorders has developed a messiah complex. Everything he does now is as a sort of superhero, come to save the world. And from what? Mostly things of his own making. His current behaviour is disastrous - both for the economy of this country in years to come and for any chance of sensible reactions to unfortunate, isolated incidents. He can't save Baby P, he won't save the economy and he should do the only sensible thing and leave well alone. As P.J. O'Rourke so incisively put it, "Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and the car keys to teenage boys". Trouble is, Gordy B has already got through a bottle of Old Moorhen's Shredded Sporran and is currently attempting to drive the British economy backwards up a motorway in rush hour. 

Boris Godunov at ENO

It's been a while since I posted about something musical here, so here goes - a short review of ENO's new production of Musorgsky's Boris Godunov, which opened last night at the Coliseum.

The piece, for those who don't know it, is pretty dark, and ENO's production, directed by Tim Albery makes no attempt to lighten things. The dark, troubled times in which Russia finds itself are reflected in a mostly grey, heavily crosslit design; the parallel with the turmoil in Tsar-elect Boris' mind is made clear, as he struggles with his guilt at having murdered, years before, the young heir to the throne for which he has now been chosen. The excellent ENO chorus (plus extras) are both a crowd and an organic part of the design - a moving part of the grey, bleak backdrop to the story of a man failing to find any peace with himself.

The production ran for two and a quarter hours without a break, so the drama had to be convicing. Generally, it was - Albery's direction did a very good job of keeping the story flowing, despite the fact that really, not an awful lot happens. The production is also blessed with some excellent singing from, amongst others, two of this country's finest basses. Peter Rose as Boris sang beautifully, and acted with an intensity which I cannot remember seeing from him before. The moment, rather reminiscent of Macbeth, where he sees a vision of Dmitri, the boy he murdered, was fantastically powerful, and dramatically chilling. Brindley Sherratt, as the monk Pimen, produced the most gloriously rich, dark tone and carried off the portrayal of an aged monk with great dignity. Both were admirable for their clear diction too.

Of the rest of the cast, this cut version (more reminiscent of Musorgsky's first version than his final one) allows few other principals much time. Nevertheless, Robert Murray was excellent as the simpleton, Gregory Turay made a lovely sound as Grigory, and Anna Grevelius was an utterly convincing boy as Fyodor, Boris' son.

The ENO Orchestra under Edward Gardner's fine conducting were superb - and this is, finally, what made this evening more than just a very miserable, grim story where the title character dies at the end. The musical standards were very high, the production fitted the drama, and the overall effect was moving. Don't go and see it for laughs - I counted two. Go and see it for the drama, because it's very good.

Organised religion, or, a series of squabbles.

On this day when, in the UK, we remember the fallen in ways that are generally couched in our officially established religion, it was interesting to see what was happening in Jerusalem.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7718587.stm

Apparently, some Armenian Christians wouldn't let some Greek Christians do what they wanted, which seems to have been to put one of their number (presumably dead) in a box. This resulted in a very un-Christian fistfight (in fact, the Greek priest interviewed by the BBC pronounced 'feast' as 'fist' - as in "the Armenians have today their fist" - how right he was).

For someone who embraced Unitarianism (or Unitarian Universalism, as this particular flavour is often described) years ago, this is further vindication of my decision. The fact that two groups whose theology is virtually indistinguishable can come to blows over whose turn it is to have their celebration shows what I had already realised - dogmatic, organised religion is not about God, or about spirituality. It is about power, control and strength in numbers. And thus it leads to violence over things which really don't matter in human terms. See the crusades; see Al qaeda for examples of what I mean. These people don't (didn't) actually differ significantly from their supposed enemies. They just have different dogma. And to me, dogma is a poison - whether it is Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or anything else: if it tells you you are superior to other human beings just for saying you believe something that they don't, it is a poison.

I should make clear, I don't oppose religion in itself. I think spirituality is a good thing, when practised by an individual for their own fulfilment and enlightenment. But exclusive, combative, dogmatic religion is exactly the opposite of what humanity needs. Jesus' message of tolerance was spot on. Unfortunately, many of his followers seem to have missed the point.

Barack Obama and the promise too far?

I'm glad Barack Obama won the US presidential election. If he hadn't, it would have looked like a step backwards, and that would have been a bad thing in terms of global politics.

However, while I really hope that Obama can make America work, it is hard to see how he can make his promises work. It's a truism, but in opposition you can promise anything you like. Government tends to make things much more complicated.

Amongst the things Obama has promised is not to behave like Bush did on Kyoto, blocking it and refusing to sign up. But there is a good deal of misinformation on why Bush did what he did - he recognised that to implement Kyoto would cost an incredibly large amount of money and have a negligible impact on carbon emissions. It was just a very expensive gesture, and so Bush decided not to take part. This was seen as an abdication of his environmental responsibilities, but in many ways it was justified. Negotiating another treaty, presumably even more expensive, is probably politically necessary but will be risky in the longer term. And promising to create 5 million "green-collar" jobs is also a very costly commitment.

The biggest problem is what has been referred to by the BBC as Obama-nomics. That is to say, his attitude to economic policy, particularly in the current unstable climate. Not only is Obama intent on spending, sorry, investing lots of borrowed money to "stimulate" the economy, which is worrying given the already astronomical national debt he will inherit, but he has promised to protect American jobs and tell companies not to send jobs overseas. He also wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade agreement. This is bad news - an American president who opposes free trade and proposes a protectionist trade policy is not what the rest of the world, especially the developing world needs.

I still hope that Obama will prove to be a success - America needs a successful president. And if that successful president is half-black, it will improve America's image. But I am worried by some aspects of his manifesto. I hope I'm wrong.

Proportion, or lack of it

Today has been a funny news day - and a day when any sense of proportion was lost.

First of all, we heard yet more about the silliness perpetrated by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, when they called Andrew Sachs on Brand's BBC radio programme and left offensive messages on his answerphone. This was, clearly, an immensely childish thing to do, and deserves to be treated as such. I have no respect at all for Russell Brand, who is a talentless idiot with backcombed hair; and whilst I do sort of respect Jonathan Ross, they should both be relieved of their radio presenting responsibilities over this. They are paid out of our license fee to do these jobs, and I don't think arseing about making prank calls to upset people counts as doing their jobs.

However, the whole business has gained an unnecessary level of prominence - our Dear Leader (how I wish I could post without mentioning him) has condemned their behaviour; and yet, I feel that there are more important things our PM could be dealing with. Although, come to think of it, at least when he's talking about this he's not coming up with ways of spending more borrowed money.

On a more serious note, a senior civil servant has been fined £2,500 for leaving top secret documents on a train. Good. Hang on... This man, it is safe to say, was making a lot of money, certiainly in six figures per annum, when he made this extraordinary mistake. If you are willing to take on the responsibility of looking after really confidential documents (and apparently he took them home "by mistake" in the first place) you must be held properly responsible. The fine he was given is ludicrously small. It seems that he was "under extreme pressure" at the time. Oh dear. Remind me to care next time someone charged with top security work cocks up unforgiveably because of "extreme pressure". It seems he has since been demoted. So it is, by implication, only a bit naughty to leave top secret documents in public view.

If our civil service is to work at all, we need to maintain proper security. "Extreme pressure" doesn't come into it. Sort it out.

Responsible borrowing? Ha.

Gordon Brown might as well get a second face tattooed on the back of his head. He has certainly mastered the art of facing both ways on all matters economic. Having presided over the extraordinary and unsustainable expansion of personal credit whilst preaching financial prudence, he has recently taken to condemning bankers and speculators for their excessive risk-taking and general financial skulduggery whilst borrowing tens of billions of pounds extra on our behalf.

Apparently he believes that it is "right and responsible" to maintain "investment". Think about this for a minute - our Prime Minister now wants the government to save us from recession by "investing" (spending money). What, precisely, are they investing? There is an important truism to remember here: all government borrowing is deferred taxation.

Ken Clarke, the best Chancellor of the Exchequer in my lifetime, made the important point on Newsnight this evening - Gordon Brown has been spending too much and borrowing too much for years, enjoying the impunity of a booming economy. To promise more of both before the recession really bites, is at best, foolish. At worst, it is downright irresponsible.

Gordon Brown - Zero to, er, Zero

I watched with astonishment the BBC news this evening. Apparently, our Prime Minister is being feted as some sort of hero amongst EU leaders. Now, in fairness, most of the these EU leaders wouldn't know a solid economy if it bit them on the ankle, but that's no excuse. Along with Bill Clinton's social agenda in the US (see previous post) a major contributor to the current problems is Gordon Brown's "light touch equals no touch at all" attitude to regulation, especially in the City of London. During the heyday of his "successful" reign as Chancellor, Gordon was busy defending the speculators and city bonuses, because everything was rosy. Now, he is falling over himself to criticise them. Those of us with memories more capacious than that of a goldfish are now wondering how he has managed to forget all the things he did and said in his old job.

The upshot of all this, and it is actually quite unfortunate, is that the Conservatives are in a difficult position. When Tony Blair took office, he inherited Ken Clarke's legacy - an economy which had been through difficult times, but which was now on the up, fundamentally sound and with a moderate national debt. When Cameron takes office (and he almost certainly will) in 2010 he will inherit probably the largest national debt this country has ever had, an economy in tatters and very low business morale, and will have to rebuild things from scratch. This will be difficult.

Remember, Gordon is not a hero. This is, at least partly, his fault. And now he is intent on spending an awful lot of your and my money, to try and stabilise the problems he and his mate Bill caused. Incompetent? Yes. Unforgivable? Absolutely.

It's official - the Toyota Prius is for posers

I have always been suspicious of people who drive the Toyota Prius. Not because it's far too expensive, very ugly and therefore obviously a bad choice, but because I've always suspected that it had a lot more to do with self-conscious smugness than any desire to save the planet. Years ago, Top Gear demonstrated not only that it struggled to achieve more than 45mpg on a normal motorway journey, but that when pushed hard round a track, it actually acheived worse fuel economy than the BMW M3 (4-litre V8 etc) which was following it at the same speeds.

Now we have the irrefutable proof - Toyota are beefing it up for the Yanks. Yes, despite the fact that Leonardo di Caprio, Cameron Diaz and various other mindless celebs have been parading the things for years, Toyota have decided that what they need to do to sell the Prius in the states is make it bigger, give it a bigger engine, improve the performance and, oh yes, make the fuel economy even less impressive.

The Prius has always been a car for fools and posers: people who are happy to spend far too much money for an uninspiring car which will do nothing to save the planet. The materials required to make its battery have to travel so far and create so much pollution in the manufacturing process that it has been argued that it has a greater environmental impact over its lifetime than a Range Rover. Now Toyota have given in and (indirectly) admitted it - so if you really want to save the planet's resources, or save money on your fuel bills, buy an efficient diesel, and drive it sensibly. Then you might actually achieve upwards of 60mpg; something that really isn't possible in the Prius.

Goodbye Ian, hello Mandy

The departure of Sir Ian Blair as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is no great surprise. But, more importantly, it's actually a good thing - despite what Jacqui Smith might say in her whining about Boris.

Ian Blair has, since the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, become increasingly divorced from reality. Most importantly, he has become untrustworthy. I, as a Londoner, don't trust him. His fellow senior police officers don't trust him. He was unwilling to take responsibility for massive blunders (see earlier post about the Menezes debacle - incidentally, he was Mr Menezes, not Mr de Menezes). Ian Blair was a political creature - that is, a mendacious, self-serving, self aggrandising man in a job which should be about helping other people. Boris did the right thing - if only it had happened sooner.

The return of Peter Mandelson to the cabinet is simply extraordinary. Not because he's already resigned twice over misdemeanours, but because it is well known that he and Gordon Brown have hated each other for the last fourteen years. Gordon has nevertheless dragged him back from Europe, where he was being cheerfully ineffectual, for no good reason I can see. He hasn't removed David Miliband, who has been setting out his stall as a future leader, or Alistair Darling, who has been monumentally useless. This is a pathetic reshuffle.

I should also point out this excellent article, the import of which is that the credit crunch is Bill Clinton's fault. It is a better explanation of the current problems than anything we've heard from the congenital Bush-haters, who will blame the current Republican administration regardless. It's worth thinking a little about the current orthodoxy - it may be wrong.

No-show? That offends me.

Over the last two evenings I have been sitting on an audition panel for a fundraising show I'm MDing for a London amateur company. It's been interesting, enjoyable and fruitful, but there has been one thing which has really surprised me: several people, especially young pros, simply failing to turn up for audition slots they had booked. I know that sometimes an audition becomes impractical or you realise you can't/don't want to do the show, but there is a reason why we give you a mobile number to contact on the day. I attend auditions quite frequently, and I wouldn't dream of simply failing to turn up.

Let me explain. There are many forms of rudeness. Some are direct, or active: pushing someone out of the way when attempting board a crowded train, for instance. Some are indirect, or passive: failing to respond to a polite email, perhaps. But they have this in common - they arise from the implicit belief that my time and priorities are more important than yours. I will not bother to travel to the venue and audition for you, but I don't think it at all important if you have to wait around for half an hour because I haven't bothered to spend twenty seconds sending you a text saying "Sorry, I can't make it".

That it is so easy to let someone know and yet some people don't is revealing. A failure of courtesy at a level as basic as this tells you everything you need to know about the person in question. One of my colleagues on the audition panel proposed a 'blacklist' for these people and said, if he were a casting director, he would set one up. Simply put, anyone who failed to turn up without informing the company would never be cast again. Casting directors are used by a large number of companies. It would work.

Unfortunately, we have become so used to this sort of basic, selfish rudeness it seems unlikely to happen. And what do we do about the person who turns up half an hour late for a meeting and fails to apologise? Or the people who reserve a table for a Saturday night at a restaurant and then don't turn up? Or indeed that berk in a suit who always pushes in front of you when you're trying to get on the tube in rush hour?

Let's blacklist them all. Next time someone does something like this to you, they have demonstrated that they have no courtesy, and deserve none in return.

Jean Charles de Menezes - a tragedy still happening

Nick Cohen recently wrote in the Evening Standard "Often it is hard to feel happy about the state of this country but the inquest into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes ought to make us proud."

Well, no, actually. You're wrong, and it isn't reasonable to compare our police to those attempting to police the favelas of Rio de Janeiro either, though you would like to. They may kill people, but they are in constant danger of being killed themselves. Our police just aren't .

Yes, it's good that we can hold our police to account, but it has no effect if noone will take responsibility for the mistakes made. The police officer in the dock today (deputy assistant commissioner John McDowall, who was responsible for developing the strategy to capture the men behind the attempted 21 July attacks) refused to admit fault after admitting that significant mistakes had been made. He had admitted that many officers had been on surveillance without any sort of photo of the suspect, Hussain Osman, and they had only ever seen a passport photo of him, despite the availability of better images. Incidentally, Jean Charles de Menezes didn't look much like Hussain Osman . He was unfortunate enough to live in the same set of flats, which the police mistakenly believed was a single house.

















This refusal to admit fault despite admitting mistakes - "clearly, I think, there probably are things that I could have done but for whatever reason at that time I did not think of it" - is symptomatic of the political attitude of the police in this country. They are no worse in this than any other major government-funded body, but that's no excuse.

If I drop a glass of red wine on the carpet, I have to get down there and clean it up. I can't just tell my girlfriend, "I could have paid more attention to what I was doing and been careful with the glass and our carpet but for whatever reason at that time I did not think of it". It's my fault and I have to deal with it. In the same way, if the police kill someone they shouldn't and it is demonstrably their fault, because they made significant mistakes, they have to, metaphorically, clean it up.

The refusal of the Met to accept that they were wrong and face the consequences is worrying for anyone who feels strongly about liberty. Freedom comes with a condition - you accept the consequences of your actions, whatever they may be. If our police can make bad mistakes, kill someone and get away with it, our "free" country is in a lot of trouble.

Corporate speak and how it's ruining communication.

Today I was travelling to a rehearsal in South London and so I had to change tubes at Euston. As I left the Northern Line platform I heard the member of staff who was standing on the platform say into the PA:

"Passengers are asked to move down the platform".

This struck me as a completely absurd thing to say. Quite apart from the fact that the people in question were not passengers, because they weren't on the train yet, why on earth would anyone talking to a group of people he could see and who could, if they tried, see him, address them in the third person and use the passive voice? Have you ever heard a child say to his mother "my parent is asked to give me a glass of milk", for instance? Would a teacher ever say to his class, "my class are asked to begin exercise four"? Of course not, because that would be bizarre. The use of the third person and the passive voice, both of which distance the speaker from the addressee, has the effect of taking a perfectly clear, simple request and making it hard to understand. And making the speaker sound like an automaton.

This is not the only example I've come across of modern English becoming less clear and more confusing. Here are some others:

A telesales person: "Do you have any identity theft insurance at all?"

What is this "at all" for? It serves no purpose and actually detracts from the clarity of the sentence.

Person from my mobile phone network provider on the phone: "Is there anything else I can do for yourself?".

Why "yourself"? This is a reflexive pronoun, like "myself". I can feed myself, but you can't do anything for myself. Only I can do things for or to myself. It has NO other purpose, and I wish people would stop using it like this. A more common misusage: "If you would like to join Paul, Sarah and myself on this trip..." Is it not painfully obvious that "me" is more appropriate and sounds better? If not, you've heard the wrong version too many times.

On a train: "We will shortly be arriving into our next station stop, which will be..."

Where do I start? "Arriving into"? "Station stop"? Or the fact that thirteen words are used here when six at most would do. "We will shortly be arriving at..." would have done exactly the same job.

This is not only about my linguistic snobbery, though that obvously has a part to play. It's also about clarity of communication, and there's nothing snobbish about that. If someone moves to this country, or even is just visiting from abroad, and English is not their first language, they don't need to be bombarded with superfluous syllables. Clarity is important. Whether through concern for foreigners, or care for the proper use of our language, we need to recapture it.

A party in meltdown

It is interesting to watch the current ructions within the Labour party. I am old enough to remember the mid-90s, when the Conservatives similarly lost all sense of perspective, but the difference here, and it's important, is that the Conservatives were at that point living on borrowed time. Neil Kinnock had handed them the '92 election on a plate, in the depths of a recession, two years after a damaging leadership contest, and they couldn't quite believe their luck. By 1995, they had descended into bickering, carping, backbiting and general self-destruction. Then, in 1997, after 18 years in office they were annihilated in the general election.

Gordon Brown, in contrast, became Labour leader (and thereby automatically Prime Minister, rather like John Major in 1990) a little over a year ago, ten years into Labour's time in office. Now, he is so spectacularly unpopular that there are rumblings of leadership contests. He has, correctly, sacked the minor party officials (enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame) who have been making public comments on the subject, but the effect is to make him seem more isolated.

Some have been predicting Gordon Brown's catastrophic decline for some time. Matthew Parris, in particular, gave warning of this well before Gordon actually became Labour leader. There are still those who believe Labour can come back from their woeful poll standings if they choose another leader. They are fantasists. Labour will lose the next general election, and they will lose it badly. And because it's hard to change a Labour leader while they're in office, and because even David Milliband isn't daft enough to take the poisoned chalice now, they'll most likely lose with Gordon Brown at the helm.

Flying into trouble

Today we heard of the collapse of the airline XL, which was apparently "a fundamental link in Britain's package holiday industry". Lots of people, apparently, now can't go on their holidays or, in at least one case, get to their own wedding. This is, of course, a bad thing for them, though most of them are entitled to alternative flights or a refund, so they'll get over it.

What surprised me about this news, other than the fact that BBC News seem to consider it their top story, is that I've never heard of XL. The company only has 21 planes, which isn't very many. BA have something like 233 in service at the moment, and even Portugal's relatively small national airline TAP has nearly sixty. So they're not huge players, but even so, their business model was clearly ropey, or they wouldn't have collapsed because fuel got more expensive. And this this brings me on to my point: booking with cheap airlines or package operators carries with it an obvious risk. They are cheap for a reason, so we shouldn't be shocked when, occasionally, they fail.

I fly fairly frequently to Lisbon, and from London you have three options: BA, TAP or easyJet. The latter (who, incidentally, have 166 aircraft in operation last I looked) have the advantage that the airport they fly from, London Luton (which is, of course, not in London in any way), is actually easy to get to from where we live. On every other front, the others win hands down. To help you understand why, let me describe for you the experience of flying with easyJet:

Before you go to the airport, you can check in online. Unless you have hold baggage, that is, and given the current ridiculous restrictions on what you can take in the cabin, most people will. In this case, you have to check in at the airport. This means you have to stand in an enormous queue with a lot of horrible holidaymakers (for some reason, the Lisbon flight always seems to be checking in at the same time as one to Tenerife) who have already painted themselves orange in preparation and who spend most of their time shouting at their feral children, until they finally reach the desk, where they shout at each other about who has the passports and the tickets. This all takes an almost unbelievable amount of time, but finally, minus your hold bag and plus a headache, you are allowed to go to security. This is even more fun.

At security you will be interrogated as to what liquids you may or may not have in your bag, forced to stand in another long queue with various differently orange people, and then made to take off most of your clothes and put them in a tray for the x-ray machine. When they are satisfied that you are not carrying anything sharp or explosive, you are allowed to put your clothes back on and proceed to departures.

Once in departures, you can avail yourself of all the wonderful facilities that Luton airport has to offer. Now, in fairness, it is slightly better than Heathrow Terminal 2, but then so is a Sudanese refugee camp - and you're more likely to get something to eat. But I digress: Luton is pretty dull, as airports go, but it's not quite the worst. Nevertheless, if you've taken easyJet's published timings seriously, you are early. No, really, you are. If you go to the gate when they ask you to, you will regret it. Go to the gate about twenty minutes or so before takeoff if you've checked in online (you'll be in the early boarding group). Otherwise, get there with fifteen minutes to spare and you'll find it's ample.

The experience at the gate is probably the worst bit of all, because easyJet refuse to allocate seats. So you board in priority order, and if you checked in at the airport you are almost bound to be in group B, which is last and biggest and has all the orange people in it. The experience of boarding is horrendous, as the bulk of the passengers can no more choose where to sit than they can prove Fermat's last theorem. So they dither, people stand around getting wet (no nice covered walkways here, you walk across the tarmac and up some steps, so it's always raining) outside the plane and the poor stewardess makes increasingly irritable announcements over the PA. When, eventually, everyone is sat down, the plane will think about taking off. And then the trolley service starts.

The trolley service is another offensive thing about easyJet. You have to pay for everything. Now, I wouldn't mind if their pricing policy on flights (cheap as possible) extended to the food and drink but it doesn't. A 33ml can of lager costs £3.20. An 18.5ml bottle of wine is also £3.20, or two for £6. A can of tango is £1.50. The sandwiches, which, incidentally are horrible, cost £3.50. So buy food and drink before you fly.

Eventually, you land so far from the airport building that the plane has to taxi for ten minutes just to reach the bus which will take another ten minutes to get you to the terminal where you will have to wait for half an hour for the bags which the paralytically lazy ground staff will have done their best to destroy. Then, when you've retrieved your bag, you are at last free to leave the airport. Drained, irritable and impecunious you have arrived. And you promise yourself that you'll fly with a proper airline next time.

Flight, by Jonathan Dove, as performed by BYO

The other evening, I went to see the opening night of British Youth Opera's production of Flight, by the currently immensely fashionable Jonathan Dove. It was a bit of a departure for BYO - they tend to perform totally standard repertoire, but here they were, producing an opera which was only written ten years ago. It wasn't much of a risk, though. Over the past few years, what with high-profile work with groups such as English Touring Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera, as well as TV operas (one about Diana, Princess of Wales, and most recently Buzz on the Moon, about what it was like to be Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon), Jonathan Dove is about as safe as living composers get.

His music is accessible too, blending as it does a strong flavour of the American minimalists (Glass, Adams et al) with great rhythmic vitality and an orchestral palette which calls to mind Janacek and Britten (indeed, BYO performed Dove's excellent rescoring of Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen four years ago). It's the sort of music which works well for a TV opera, where it can act as background as well as foreground.

Unfortunately, Flight is not a TV opera. Martin Lloyd Evans did a typically good job with the staging, making sure to squeeze every laugh out of the funny bits, and allowing the drama repose when the reflective moments came along. There are moments of real musical beauty in this work, and there are moments of high comedy, but somehow, they don't hang together as they should. Part of the problem is that Dove's distinctive style is also fairly limited, and a lot of the music sounds essentially rather similar - he does make use of what the programme notes call "organic thematic motifs", but they are not strong enough or characteristic enough to provide structural unity. The distinctive ideas come at the obvious moments - the airport announcement jingle, for instance - and they work, but only as markers, not as structural supports. The overall effect is somewhat confusing - you remember the big moments of the drama, and you are aware that music was present, but it is hard to remember how the music interacted with most of the drama, or even if it did at all.

That said, there were some strong performances here, notably from Andrew Radley as the Refugee, who gave a dramatically strong performance of a vocally demanding role. Colette Boushell and Nicky Spence made a fine bickering couple, and the mezzo Charlotte Stephenson made the most of her reflective moments as the Minskwoman, given some of the loveliest music to sing. Nicholas Cleobury conducted effectively, and Bridget Kimak's set and costumes worked well too. Another good BYO production, but as to the repertoire - I think best stick to the tried and tested in future.

The Class Gap

Today, in a painfully predictable attempt to pacify the Labour Party's disgruntled financiers, the trades unions, Harriet Harman has spoken about the need to "narrow the class gap" in the UK. Now, there are several things wrong with this, so lets start with the most obvious first: she and her chums have been in government for the last eleven years, going on about equality and social justice. So why start to make these noises now? The sad truth is, they have no more idea of how to achieve this goal now than they did eleven years ago.

The next thing that's wrong is the presumption that government should be the tool which we employ to "narrow the class gap". By definition, any change which government can make will be imposed from above, not generated from below. Individual human beings will continue to behave like individual human beings, and only if they are motivated on an individual level to change their lot will anything change on a larger scale.

The biggest thing that's wrong, though, is the presumption that the "class gap" is what matters. Social class is not something that people, by and large, choose (though some people are remarkably determined to call themselves working class, especially when they have quite a lot of money and are a bit embarrassed about it). Social class is about how you're brought up, what your expectations and aspirations are, where you see yourself fitting in. It's an individual thing, something over which government has no control. I walked past City and Islington College's Business and Arts centre today and was struck by the conformity and almost uniform dress of many of the students: baggy tracksuits, trainers, large baseball caps with big labels on worn at funny angles. This dress code represents their social class, where they come from and where they feel they fit. You can't tell them that it's wrong, any more than you can tell them that their names are wrong.

What Harriet Harman and her socialist ilk fail to realise is that it is precisely the government-encouraged culture of dependance on state munificence that has come to define the aspirations and expectations of those at the bottom end of the scale. Their lives are sufficiently comfortable, their parents (thanks to the same welfare state) never saw the need to aspire to anything greater, so they are happy to claim benefits, live in local authority housing and breed more of the same. It's like refusing to remove the stabilisers from a child's bicycle - it won't fall over, but neither will it go very fast, or go round corners very effectively, so they will never really learn how liberating it is to cycle on two wheels. Similarly, for the benefit-dependent class, their liberty and social mobility is undermined by this safety net. Which is why it needs to change.

That would be difficult to do - to tell the long-term benefit claimants that, unless they actually can't, they need to think about making a living for themselves, rather than depending on those of us who pay tax on our incomes to subsidise their lives. But it is the only way to really liberate those at the bottom of the scale - take off their stabilisers and watch them wobble along on two wheels until they get the hang of it.

Ed Balls on Andrew Marr

I feel I should relate what I saw this morning on Andrew Marr's Sunday morning show. It was the spectacle of the marvellously-named Ed Balls (our schools minister, in case you were wondering) trying to talk up the government's prospects.

There would normally be nothing unusual in a government minister being postive about the government, but there are two things which set this example apart: the fact that Ed Balls is one of Gordon Brown's oldest allies; and the fact that he could hardly bring himself to read from his internal script. For Mr Balls couldn't stop himself stumbling before words which he clearly didn't believe. Phrases such as "Gordon Brown has done really... well" and "the economy will grow ... stronger" really troubled him.

It must be hard to be part of a doomed government. Especially one which came in on such a high, and took on such a solid economy (whatever Gordon might tell you). Indeed, taking on a new leader seems to have made things worse, rather than better. But then, he was hardly new.

The next 18 months (which we will probably have to wait for a general election) will probably prove very entertaining. Despite the fact that we know who will win.

Another blog

I feel I should explain myself briefly. I am a London-based professional musician and a libertarian conservative. Simply put, my attitude to economic matters is conservative and my attitude to social matters is libertarian. If you're not sure what libertarian is (it is emphatically NOT the same as liberal), have a look here.

There's an interesting quiz here to see if you have any libertarian leanings.

This blog will be a bit of a mixed bag. Some music, some politics, some pictures. I hope at least some of it will be interesting.