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I have just become an Ambassador for my county of East Sussex. No, we have not declared UDI, although one hears more and more talk of such a thing from several ‘sad shires’. It is just that the county council’s chairman has chosen 25 of us to go out into the world and preach the good news about our county. It is a great honour, but we do not get any diplomatic immunity, special number plates, free parking or even an entertainment allowance. We simply have to lie abroad (Kent? Surrey?) for the sake of our county. If I were a ‘real’ Ambassador, I would be slightly irritated that more and more bodies are adopting my title for their own purposes. In these trying times for the media, I am thinking of writing ‘Ambassador’ rather than ‘journalist’ on my passport. Now that Mr Prescott’s schemes for regional government are, thank goodness, in ruins, I also await some recognition from the European Union of the enhanced status of counties, and of their diplomatic representatives.
One of those complacent wisdoms that politicians love delivering is what Denis Healey liked to call ‘Healey’s First Law of Holes’, which states, ‘If you’re in a hole, stop digging.’ Is this always good advice? Since politics is a trade constantly looking for the weakness of opponents rather than making disinterested judgments of the merits of a case, ceasing to dig a hole you have begun can be very dangerous. Your critics immediately shout that you have ‘blinked’, or ‘admitted’ error, and at the same time complain that it is not enough to stop digging — you should start filling up the hole you made. Thus, it was probably a mistake by Tony Blair to apologise for the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction even to the extent that he has. It doesn’t get him out of the hole: it simply makes him look more foolish to the people staring down at him round its edge. The alternative to Healey’s law is the old first world war cartoon of two soldiers in the trenches: ‘If you knows a better ’ole, go to it.’
Barbara Plett, the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, has been made to apologise for saying on air that she ‘started to cry’ when she saw the helicopter carrying the dying Yasser Arafat out of his compound take to the air. The BBC is obviously right not to discipline her, though, since she only blurted out what they all think. Besides, it is traditional that the Corporation grieves at the death, or near-death, of murderers. In the first volume of his memoirs, The Missing Will, Michael Wharton (aka Peter Simple), who was working for the BBC at the time, remembers a drink with colleagues from their offices in Manchester in March 1953. Wharton went to the regular BBC bar and found a group of them looking extremely glum. ‘What’s the matter? What has happened?’ he asked. The leader of the group ‘turned to me slowly and solemnly and said, “Haven’t you heard? Stalin is dead.” I could not help saying, “Pity he was ever born.”…They did not speak to me again for a fortnight, and ever afterwards avoided me.’
Recently, at a party, I came across a wonderful fountain which cascaded liquid chocolate for us to dip our fruit in. This was described as a ‘must-have’. The phrase means the opposite. No one says that bread, water, light or shelter are ‘must-haves’.
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