Published: Thursday, 17th July, 2008 09:00
Knives out for them, for me, and for Mr Gray
By Maurice O'Brien
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Maurice O'Brien
THE confusion and panic echoing along the corridors of power amid the rattle of knives is now bordering on the surreal.
Never more so than in the appointment of Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Alf (nee Alfred) Hitchcock as the Government’s own master of suspense, seeking a mystery plot twist that will stop young men stabbing each other.
One of his ideas, persuading young people to volunteer overseas, certainly has merit. If you can’t beat 'em, pack 'em off somewhere else.
But with nostalgic memories of days when even senior coppers spoke plain English, how unnerving to hear him burbling about knives in a “broader societal context”.
When it comes to surreal, however, it was hard to beat Bolton A&E surgeon Donald MacKechnie, wheeled out on Monday morning to rubbish Jacqui Smith’s quickly withdrawn idea for taking knifemen into hospitals to inspect their victims’ injuries.
Protesting that it wouldn’t work, Mr MacKechnie told the Today programme: “We’re seeing it at the sharp end.”
- ALWAYS gratifying to receive reaction to one’s scribblings, even when it comes from the scratchy old chap, probably a backwoods relation of a backbench MP, who rang anonymously last Thursday to berate me for “sneering” at the Commons’ trough-snuffling practices.
Of course I apologise unreservedly; for omitting to mention their incredibly generous and failproof pension scheme; the lucrative directorships many can’t even wait to leave the Commons to take up; the highly paid jobs lobbying higher-ranking colleagues; free London parking; all those fact-finding jaunts to guaranteed sunnier climes; cordon bleu menus at soup kitchen prices.
Detached from reality? What a suggestion.
- THE price of success may have been hit by the rate of inflation but these days there’s clearly full value to be wrung from failure.
By an absolute distance, the winner of this week’s Sepp Blatter Award for services to slavery goes to Paul Gray, former chairman of HM Revenue and Customs.
Mr Gray, you may recall, quit his job over the still unsolved disappearance of those computer discs containing the vitally personal details of 25 million people.
But if you thought those were tears in his eyes then think again, because any reaction to his demise was clearly provoked by the eye-watering amount of boodle he took with him when he cleared his desk.
This comprised his 2007-08 salary of £120,000, a £137,591 lump sum resignation pay-off, £49,292 in equal instalments for each of the seven months between the date he quit and next month’s official retirement, plus a pension pot totalling more than £2 million.
That means since April last year he’ll have trousered £306,883 to go with his £2,021,000 pension.
Imagine how much he’d have got if he’d known anything about security.
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