Talk To Rex

The Evening Standard (which I don’t buy, but which has a tendency of being full of interesting-looking letters while I’m buying lunch) has devoted its front page to telling us how Oona King, MP for bits of London where you can get a blowjob only slightly more easily than cocaine, was offered cash for sex while an assistant at the European Parliament.

Most of the page is spent wittering on about this in tones of mild disgust (whether at the MEP in question, or Ms King herself, was somewhat unclear from a cursory glance, but I’ll assume they’re shocked at the offer), waiting until the last column to reveal that he offered to pay out of his cost allowance. Which, as far as I understand, means he was offering to defraud the European Parliament for a bit of nookie. I don’t want to belittle people who are unjustly treated like whores, but isn’t fraud serious enough to get a little higher up? Perhaps MEP’s fiddling their expenses is just too common these days, although doing it to fiddle your assistant isn’t something I’ve heard before.

The Scotsman also covers it, citing an article by Ms King in the Daily Mirror (which I’ll let pass). They print some of her words, which make interesting reading:

“People complain that with all-women shortlists you end up with mediocre candidates,” she said. “But, my God, has nobody noticed that the Commons is stuffed with mediocre men? That’s because the system has effectively put forward all-men shortlists for 500 years or more.”

If the Commons is stuffed with mediocre men (something I’m not convinced about, but never mind) then most of them are Labour. The total number of ministers is large enough to be a reasonable sample of the House of Commons, so a fair number of them must be mediocre men as well. Which perhaps isn’t quite what she meant. But what really gets me is the use of the word ‘effectively’ in that last sentence – I wish she’d just come out and say that the system favours men. And that “500 years or more” – parliament extends back, in a broken and somewhat jittery line, to the thirteenth century: is she saying that corrupt male primacy had probably disappeared by the nineteenth century? The first woman MP was elected in late 1918, but did not take her seat; the first who did wasn’t until nearly a year later. It’s a horribly misleading statement – which perhaps explains why Mirror readers are so horribly misled.

The Scotsman is also notable for using reported speech to present something it really could have fact-checked for itself:

Ms King said that the record 120 female MPs elected to Parliament in 1997 made up more than half of the total of 239 women who had ever been MPs up to that point.

Had they bothered to check, they might have pointed out that of those female MPs, a whopping fifty were defending their seats in 1997. So only seventy or so new female MPs were elected.

But we’ll accept her numbers; it would be churlish to argue over points of mathematics. Now: who’s in favour of declaring Disraeli a girl to make that an even half?

After reading of James’ diocesal publicity (see below), I decided to see if Google knew of any good photos of me. It’s unlikely, given that very few photos of me have found their way onto the Internetweb – but you never know, so I thought I’d give it a try.

The first page of results is somewhat perplexing. Photos of myself, James and the two Andrews (presumably missing Phil, Ali, Susie and Mary – who are also featured on this site – because they’ve only been up for a mere six months, lazy Google) jostle for position with:

• Harry Porter (this is actually an easier way of finding a photo of Harry than by putting his name into Google – because many people, it seems, can’t spell Harry Potter)
• The logo of a band I was in at university
• The Islamic Studies Library at McGill University, Canada
• Assassination Science, a book on JFK’s murder
• A red square called “blank”
• A banner for the historical archives of the Civil War in the Virginia Historical Society
• A banner for the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta

The last three are most amazing, because they seem to appear on pages that contain neither “James” nor “Aylett”. Google, it seems, is nothing if not unpredictable. Which isn’t really what I want from Google, to be honest.

Hmm. Fans may be interested to see that there’s a rather scary picture of me in the Ely Ensign this month.

Almost all of the facts in the article are erroneous, as is the photograph caption “James Lark performs on stage for The Uncertainty Division theatre company”. A better caption might have been “James Lark – a poor man’s Alan Rickman”. And such an alarming photo also seems rather at odds with the words right next to it – it’s put me off Church of England pensions, at any rate.

Being a wee bit exhausted yesterday evening, I collapsed on the sofa in front of The Smoking Room, a sitcom I am happy to say I have not had a chance to see before.

Predictable, poorly written, poorly acted, poorly paced, populated with unconvincing characters, yet with a distressing absence of funny lines, unoriginal, derivative, infantile and utterly unengaging.

Of course, sitcoms can get away with all of those things now by electing not to have a laughter track, excusing the paucity of jokes with pretentions towards dramatic significance like The Royle Family or delusions of being trendy and new like The Office.

Or maybe there is a laughter track, there just weren’t any places for people to laugh.

In any case, after twenty minutes I’d had enough, so I switched it off and went to bed.

It’s enough to make one long for an episode of Friends. (I can’t believe I just typed that.)

I reckon they’re in his beard.

Well, he has a beer, and (somewhat less excitingly) a “castle” (or what the English, more accurately, might call “a house”, or perhaps simply “ours”).

He also appears to have a ship. I particularly like the lifelike rendition of its demise at the bottom of that page.

I have just discovered that there is a Saint Fagan.

Unfortunately, the usually brilliant Catholic Forum Index of Saints does not include any reference to him (or her), so I have been unable to ascertain whether he/she is in fact the Patron Saint of Jewish Stereotypes.

(Although Jewish stereotypes surely need a Patron Saint, the closest the index gets to Jews is Jesuits, and the letters “ster” only bring up “sterility” – the Patron Saint against it, that is, not for it. Casilda of Toledo seems a pretty safe bet if you’re sterile.)

If anyone knows anything about Saint Fagan, please get in touch. Otherwise I shall undoubtedly be sending him/her my prayers next time I’m appearing in Fiddler on the Roof.

I am entering data for a human resources department at the moment, putting into a computer the moribund details of other people’s job applications. I have noted that a depressing number of CVs open with a paragraph along the lines of “I am a highly motivated, enthusiastic individual with good communication skills, I respond well to challenges, enjoy team building and am keen to approach new tasks with highly-motivated team-building challenge-responding task-challenged-motivational people-based communication-friendly enthusiasm…”

Never has the word “individual” been so misplaced by so many people. Do any employers actually read what they’ve written, let alone believe it? And why start your CV with it, unless it is to distract employers from the abysmal lack of actual qualifications?

My CV begins with the simple paragraph “B.A. Music, Cambridge University – First Class Honours”. Is that why I am currently doing data entry…?

Maybe I should replace it with a vapid paragraph of meaningless adjectival vomit after all.

I’ve just come across one application from a Mrs Natalia Konovalova, and I’m thinking, why is she applying to be a kitchen porter when her name is crying out for her to invent a pudding of some sort? Probably meringue-based with lots of thick, unhealthy cream and chocolate sponge steeped in cognac. “Yes, please, I’ll have the Konovalova Natalia if I may, and profiteroles for my wife.”

Failing that, “Konovalova” should at least be a word used to describe the palava caused in the event of a con. (i.e. The Thomas Crown Affair is a film that leads up to a highly entertaining konovalova.)

Prince and the New Education

Prince Charles is reported as complaining that “young people believed they could succeed without having talent or putting in hard work”. This just makes sense, doesn’t it? When did we start believing that people could get ahead without being good at what they do, and dedicating themselves to it?

Perhaps Charles has said more inflammatory things that no one can be bothered to report. That’s Prince Charles there, not Charles Clarke, who says equally sensible things like “We can aspire to do our best”. I just don’t see how these things aren’t equally capable of being true. What am I missing?

Spain and racism

Metro reports Spanish daily AS as saying “Multi-culturalism is a new thing in our country”. Isn’t Christians and Moors fighting each other considered multi-cultural these days? At the very least, it’s a backdrop to the comment which perhaps should have been acknowledged.

Metro have also managed to avoid an article in the phrase “FIFA, football world’s governing body”. Really not sure how that works.

Best about this story, however, has got to be that FIFA’s president is called Sepp Blatter. Wow!

MTV Europe Music Awards

Metro notes that Sarah Michelle Gellar co-hosted – indeed, there’s a picture of her on the front page – but fails to point out how bad she looks in that make-up. No one’s going to want to have sex with you if you look like Barbie, Sarah. Well, no one except Ken.

The above, said by a man at the station last night. It was definitely snow, and this morning car windscreens were covered in crazily patterned ice, the grass was layered with a thin white – but, fortunately, the pavements and roads were clear, possibly due to some magic underground heating system the council has installed without telling anyone. (Or possibly because the ground retains heat fairly well, and we’re still not properly into winter. But my way is more fun.)