Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Here is the political obituary for Gwyneth Dunwoody...

Simon Carr
Monday 01 July 2002 00:00 BST
Comments

The debate on the public private partnership (PPP), which is going to run the London Underground, was so little reported that it's worth laying out here the substance of Gwyneth Dunwoody's speech on the subject.

She is the chairwoman of the Transport sub-committee, which opposes the proposals to hand over the Tube to private financiers and a complex array of subcontractors.

Her speech is a sort of suicide note. The Treasury, people assume, will lean on the whips to stack her committee with government bench-monkeys later this year; they will vote in a new and more tractable chairperson.

Here then are the items from the floor of the House that Ms Dunwoody would like included in her obituary.

* The Treasury dominated the bid process, to the exclusion of the Department of Transport. Yet the Treasury refused to come to the committee to explain what it was doing.

* The PPP replicated so many of the difficulties of Railtrack, that they felt that the Government was in danger of doing the same thing again.

* An independent assessment of the merits of the PPP concluded that it was impossible to assess the deal objectively: many of the judgements needed to establish whether the scheme was value for money were subjective. "How are we to proceed, if we are not convinced that we are committing the taxpayers' money to a deal that is in their interest?"

* Was it true that the people involved in the deal were saying they would need extra millions of pounds immediately after the terms were signed? If so, why wasn't the committee told?

* Companies would be able to press for better terms after seven and a half years. What would happen if the companies wanted substantially higher subsidies and fares? London Underground could be held to ransom by the companies, who would be in an extremely powerful position.

* Why was there no public interest exclusion? Why would it not be possible for the Government of the day to demand change in the public interest?

* There was no 15-year public sector comparator and some of the quoted figures had no basis in any of the published reports. The level of cost overruns to which the infrastructure companies would be exposed before they could seek an extraordinary review was paltry compared to the size of the investment programme.

* Risk transfer was one of the key reasons given for undertaking the deals, but it is seriously undermined.

In sum, Ms Dunwoody put it as baldly as possible: "Beware ­ this is a bad scheme, which can still be dropped and should be abandoned."

Gordon Brown is devoted to the scheme because he doesn't want the billions of pounds necessary to appear as public spending. This scheme gets them off the balance sheet. The private companies realised the Government was committed to the scheme for political reasons, and so they have made a killing.

Ms Dunwoody is, in the phrase, collateral damage.

* A cautionary joke about experts, and why we shouldn't believe them.

A mathematician, a biologist and a physicist were watching people go in and out of a building. Two went in and later three came out.

The physicist said: "The measurements were wrong." The biologist said: "They reproduced." The mathematician said: "If one more person goes inside, the building will be empty again."

The facts, while interesting, rarely make a difference to the things we decide on.

*The Germans are bombarding our schools with German jokes in an effort to get children to learn their language. They won't be offering this entirely reprehensible joke from my male Czech au pair: "A late sports result, it's a very late sports result indeed. It's World War Two ­ Germany nil!"

Wallis Simpson: The agony and the ecstasy

Wallis Simpson, royal seductress, Nazi sympathiser, expert sexualist was said to have had a trick so effective that it made men ­ putty is the wrong word ­ weak in her hands. The King himself, so it was said, was unable to rise to intimate occasions without this trick. He loved her devotedly. No one knows what the trick was.

Research reveals only that it was called the Lobster Grip. It's worth visualising what a Lobster Grip might be, to work out what went where and when. I don't know about you but nothing immediately springs to mind. And that which does eventually emerge isn't particularly convincing. Claws.

Clack clack. There. Wherever there is. People are peculiar. Aren't you? Perhaps the grip derives from the other end of things. The way one would hold a lobster to catch it. Or eat it. To open it up in the middle and bury your face in it making horrid truffling noises while twitching legs scratch your face. Does that do anything for you? It's still not quite working for me.

Whatever it was, Edward VIII loved Wallis Simpson and gave up his throne for her. Rather than do without whatever it was, he went off to govern the Bahamas. That's love of a rare order, and begs the question: just how much of the king could Wallis get in her Lobster Grip? Sexual tricks can't be decisive in generating love. Love is too strange to be generated by a trick. Love isn't a compound of pleasure and friendship.

The trick is overrated. Surely? This is the best trick I've ever heard of. A friend of mine had it performed on him once (sensitive readers should look away now). A dab of cocaine was applied to his scrotum. A scalpel was inserted through to his interior. A drinking straw was inserted into the hole and blown into. His sac inflated to the size of a tennis ball. Then the act proceeded normally. If "normally" is precisely the word we're after.

In terms of sheer physical pleasure, as Evelyn Waugh's heroine said, you might prefer to go to your dentist. But, while you wouldn't want to try this at home, in the hands of an expert it is said to prolong the ecstasy far beyond the agony. Twenty minutes, it is said. Twenty minutes! But again, this didn't produce love. Astonishment, yes. Anxiety, yes. Admiration, certainly. But love, no, not love.

A modern royal, and it wouldn't be appropriate in jubilee year to reveal which one, used to find pleasure in his partner crying out (at his crisis rather than her own), the words: "Thank you, Sir! Thank you, Sir!" And who wouldn't like that, I hear you say. You're generous souls. But that story is more revealing of love. You are driven by something fundamental to ask for the ridiculous, and your idiotic secret is treated respectfully, even with desire. You commune in a magical intimacy only you can share.

The Lobster Grip is not enough. Wallis Simpson must have been doing something much more elaborate to have kept her king. But what?

Is everyone too busy for a revolution?

* Anarchists must celebrate what's happening in the Netherlands. To reduce traffic accidents, the authorities have done away with stop lights at intersections. They've been rewarded with a much lower accident rate. Extraordinary thing. People wake up, essentially. Because they aren't being told what to do by machines they pay more attention at the crossroads. They make eye contact with other drivers and agree quickly what to do.

Taxis (that's the Greek word for order) has been superseded by cosmos (that's the other Greek word for order). The discipline of a military unit has been replaced by the natural order that evolves as living creatures interact freely.

It's entirely contrary to the mood that prevails in Britain's political class. It would take a revolution to happen here. Is everyone too busy to have a revolution this week? John Prescott's flat has been a running theme over the last two parliaments. He's had a cheap home in London from the Rail Maritime Transport Union for 30 years, adding up to a benefit, estimated by his pursuer, the Tory MP Andrew Robathan, of about £250,000. Mr Prescott never declared it in the MPs' register of interests.

The Labour-dominated committee charged with upholding standards in public life saw nothing wrong with this. The Prime Minister, when asked in the House whether such practices were in keeping with the ministerial code, described the question as "the usual rubbish".

Now the union has kicked Mr Prescott out and it wants its flat back. He's not inclined to give it back. He's a protected tenant. The law's on his side.

They never fail to surprise you. When you think there is nowhere lower to go, a new depth is discovered.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in