Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 13 December 2008

Monday

Mr Maude ecstatic about the polls. Says it’s the most significant narrowing he has seen in all his years of being miserable about the possibility of the Tories ever winning again. ‘Only four points ahead! We’re doomed! DOOMED I tell you!’ All the way to the Panic Room he was shouting: ‘Consigned to the scrap heap! Banished to the electoral wilderness! We’ve brought this on ourselves with all the evil talk of spending cuts!’ Of course this is complete nonsense. We only talked about spending cuts for ten minutes two weeks ago. It was barely briefed before we took it straight back, rubbished it and claimed we had never said it. Which of course we hadn’t.

Tuesday

Super speech by Dave this morning about spending cuts. Really nailed it. While it is not the case that we ever asked Mr Letwin to go through Whitehall budgets to root out wasteful spending, Dave has asked every shadow minister to go through their budgets line by line to root out wasteful spending. Thought everyone would be pleased afterwards but no such luck. Dave v cross about Labour’s attempt to restrict sales of lads mags. Says it was his idea first and another example of how this government will steal every little tiny idea we have, no matter how small or insignificant. Jed demanding to know why we didn’t come up with the proposal to restrict ciggie sales too. This is tricky. No one could say the real reason — the smoke that sometimes curls under the door before PMQs.

Wednesday

Don’t think much of the Xmas reading list. I keep trying to tell Dave I could do a better job than Keith Simpson but he insists on letting him do it. Possibly he feels sorry for him cos he looks like Biggles, calls himself a ‘military historian’ and thinks politics is about ‘Positional and Manoeuvre Tactics’. If you ask me, he’s been spending way too much time with DD. What are we to make of Sir David Mitchell — From House to House: The Endless Adventure of Politics and Wine. I suppose it helps a relation of a shad cab member to plug his work, but all good nepotism aside, is this really the sort of thing Compassionate Modernisers should be reading during the hols? (It’s not the only book about wine either, but that’s not something for me to make snide hints or cast aspersions about.) Then we have Anthony Trollope — The Way We Live Now. On the face of it, looks like something that might be Modern. But apparently it was published in 1875. If that’s Biggles’s idea of ‘now’ I dread to think what his idea of ‘then’ is. There’s only one book on the entire list that I can see any value in and that’s Celia Haddon — The Joy of Cats. But personally I would have gone for All About Horses, by Marguerite Henry. But it’s not up to me, is it?

Thursday

Still no new chocolate sachets for the frappuccino machine. It’s been two weeks now. I know we have to make cutbacks but what about keeping morale up? No bagels, no smoothies. Some people are actually bringing in sandwiches. In plastic boxes. We can’t even send emails cos they’re all being bugged by police owing to something called the Brian Wilson Doctrine. It’s too depressing for words. And if Mrs Spelperson doesn’t stop going round telling everyone we’re ready for a general election, sooner or later Gordon is going to work out what she really means. And then we’ll be in trouble.