Getting away from the misery of 2009 and the fag-end, quasi-administration of Gordon Brown isn’t easy. There aren’t many escape routes.

Here’s one I tried earlier.

The myth of Minack in Cornwall has not affected everyone. Few now remember the long series of books by Derek and Jeannie Tangye that ended in the mid 1990s. I had a small walk-on part in the drama, so recall it more than most. Turn away if the call of wild nature is not to your taste.

Over the years, the many adherents to the Minack story have been among the most loyal readers anywhere. But what is the truth: was it an English Shangri-la, or just another hyped publishing opportunity?

If the American dream is to join the high rollers of a largely fluid society and take one’s place at the top of the tree, the British version is much more muted.

Of old it was an aspiration to the squirearchy: an elegant manor house, a few tenanted farms and three days a week in the City. Nowadays, it tends to be a rugged farmhouse in the country, a smallholding, and shelling peas by an open fire.

But Derek and Jeannie Tangye got there first. Way back in the austere 1950s, they abandoned their London lives — she as the famed publicity queen with the Savoy Hotel on the Strand, he as a social gadfly, spy, and sometime journalist — and moved to a minuscule cottage on the coast near Lamorna in West Cornwall. Through Derek’s writings about the place, Minack became a promised land to millions of people around the world.

So was it quite as idyllic as the dream would have us believe. Like everything else, the answer is a complex one.

In their favour, the pair stuck it out until their deaths, Jeannie’s in 1986 and Derek’s in 1996, so we can assume that life was at least tolerable. But their early years were undoubtedly harsh.

Converting the cliffs on their new domain into those peculiar Cornish potato meadows, that have to be tilled by hand, was never going to be easy for urban people. Daffodils, and other early-season blooms, dominated the remainder of the rough landscape.

The weather was fickle — as it always is. Prices fluctuated — as they always do. Both Derek and Jeannie turned to writing to make ends meet — as the middle classes usually do. Each was successful in their own way, and that helped.

Soon, though, the dark clouds of change swept over their demi-paradise of toil and struggle. New cultivation methods elsewhere devastated the Cornish daffodil and new-potato industries.

Tourists started to flood in, responding to the Minack legend created by Derek in his books. Suburbia came to Minack and never thereafter left them alone.

In a book written after Jeannie’s death, Derek told of the strain of those years and how their lack of children diminished their relationship by slow attrition. It was no idyll by this account.

I went to Minack just after Derek’s death to investigate the agricultural lease to the main property. The house and 21 acres (so-called Oliver Land is now a nature reserve) was available to the right person. The owner, Viscount Falmouth, was determined to maintain the legend by all accounts.

It seemed to me like a wonderful opportunity to make a new start after seven years living in Spain. But it soon became clear that this was Derek and Jeannie’s dream, not mine.

I took the scenic route along the cliffs from Lamorna — not as easy as it sounds in the Chronicles — and found myself walking beside a lengthy fence which skirted the cliff path. Totally lost, I eventually took a gamble and climbed over an old gate into what seemed a deserted farmyard. It was Minack.

There was the much-described cottage — so small. How could they have lived in it all those years? The famous “bridge” (a vantage point) was bijou in the extreme; and “Monty’s Leap”, that giants’ causeway of the imagination, was a little trickling stream across the lane.

From such small and and simple features came a whole world that resonated in the minds of jaded urbanites in every corner of the planet.

Gilbert White did it for Selborne, and Derek Tangye made a mighty mountain out of his beloved molehill at Minack.

Small really is beautiful when there’s no one else around.

John Evans

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The Prime Minister learned the difference between popular parlance and the terminology of economists and statisticians at PMQs today.

While it is perfectly permissible to speak of inflation at zero percent, or even minus one percent, you can never describe spending projections as “a zero percent rise”. Naturally, the Tory benches went into Hogarthian mode after the slip.

Gordon Brown’s reputation for clunkiness went up a further notch today — probably the only indicator on the rise for some years ahead.

David Cameron is right to keep up his relentless barrage of furious interrogation on the issue because, as Fraser Nelson, Matthew Parris, and Syntagma have all pointed out, it throws “Tory cuts” back on the Prime Minister and Labour.

It’s like Andy Murray countering an opponent’s weak second serve with unplayable shots. Conservatives have nothing to fear from their policy of hacking back public financing of the Guardian jobs pages.

At one point, the Conservative leader tried a new label for hopeless Brown: Mr Thirteen-and-a-half Percent. Umm, no … it would take too long to explain, and is too generous by 13.5pc.

Mr Zero Percent conveys an emptiness of content; a nadir beyond which reasonable men don’t venture; a complete full stop.

Cameron rammed it home: “This is the most feeble performance he’s ever given,” he cried, slightly swallowing the last two words as if his mind was already turning to the next attack. [Note to Dave - Don't pull the thrust until the sword comes out the other side.]

However, he produced a “killer blow” with a Treasury document headed: “Reduction in medium-term spending.” Brown attempted to turn the tables by dubbing the Tories “the party of unemployment”.

On The Daily Politics, Nick Watt, a Guardian man for heaven’s sake, supported David Cameron to the hilt. “Brown is back in the 1980s,” he said, “It won’t work today.”

“Mr Zero Percent” is beginning to look like a very useful slogan in the run-up to the General Election.

Nick Clegg again made telling points on spending, but failed to rattle Brown with a demand to cut the Trident project.

Bercow Watch: The Squeaker, as the Mail man in the gallery hilariously calls him, was almost absent from the proceedings. He made a couple of mild interventions on behalf of David Cameron, then settled back into spectator mode.

At last we had a PMQs that shed some light on the crucial arguments over public spending that will rage until the election. All the thinking, though, came from the Tory side. All the fibs, muck-raking and desperation arose from the diminished figure of Gordon Brown.

Syntagma’s Verdict:
Cameron, 8
Clegg, 6
Brown, zero percent
Bercow, 1.5

John Evans

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Everyone’s doing it. From ace tennis players to genteel novelists; international fund managers to the Shadow Cabinet.

Wargaming the future is the business tool of choice for the 21st century.

Back in the 1980s we had to put up with ghastly brainstorming sessions, where hyperactive business types vied for attention by shouting crackpot ideas across a crowded meeting room. Now it’s wargaming. Now it’s serious.

Wargaming — in case you’re not familiar with the term — is a technique designed to test the feasibility of potential future actions.

There are two ways to achieve this. The first uses other people as devil’s advocates. The second, more profound method, involves one person utilizing the extended part of the mind that’s not attached to the physical brain.

Political and business wargaming
Let’s look briefly at the first way. The Shadow Cabinet — David Cameron, William Hague, George Osborne, and others — will examine a new idea for inclusion in the party’s forthcoming manifesto by walking it through various stages of presentation and implementation.

What will Gordon Brown’s reaction be? Nick Clegg’s? More to the point, what will Peter Mandelson and Vince Cable think?

The owner of the idea will be too attached to it for objectivity, so other people’s views will strip away the subjectivity and reveal its viability or otherwise. It’s a good way to assess possible objections and the reaction of one’s political opponents.

The method has two stages: other minds’ inputs, and walking the idea through imaginary scenarios. It’s effective as far as it goes, but it leaves out one crucial element.

Personal wargaming
I’ve long been a personal wargamer, subjecting new ideas to an inner process of confrontation with possible causes of conflict and defeat.

Modern tennis players imagine playing superb passing shots down the line against Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer. Golfers do it too — “mind golf” is ultra trendy among golf psychologists and course pros.

Novelists report that at some point in their writing the characters take over and develop lives of their own. That is where the extended mind intervenes in the process.

So how is it done?

If you’ve ever had a daydream designed to perk up your mood, or distract you from the cares and excesses of the day, you have the tools for wargaming.

If you can create a movie in your head and consciously manipulate the action, you can subject an idea or project to imaginary stress tests of viability. It’s amazing how quickly you will identify the stumbling blocks along the way.

In daydreams, you are using the language of the extended “mind-beyond-brain” by picturing the situation. Visualization goes beyond linear thought processes to a much deeper level.

As you approach a hazy area where your knowledge or experience is inadequate, the wider mind slots in an infinitely wiser proposition. You are also able to judge between the success and failure of possible actions by the tone around them.

A sense of depression in the pit of the stomach is a clear negative, while a feeling of excitement and pleasure is a definite go-ahead. If you get something in between, you may have to refine the action into a sharper focus.

Personal wargaming is such a powerful tool that we often do it at an unconscious level. At night, dreams really are trying to tell us something about our major preoccupations. It especially applies to the powerful “hypnagogic” images received in that drowsy period before and after sleep.

Here’s an example from my own demonology:

Next week, I’m launching a major new project. It’s the first in a series of four local supersites covering the counties of the West Country of England.

There have been many teething problems along the way, the latest involving the quantity of code needed to serve adverts to the hundreds of ad spots in the website. Some 12,000 lines of code have to be added to the site before Wednesday. We are drowning in javascript.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t leap out of slumber with my customary verve this morning, but slipped back into unconsciousness with guilty relief.

I found myself wandering down an unidentified High Street with many shopping bags in tow. That in itself is unusual, since I detest shopping and order most things from the internet for delivery to the house.

I became aware that my dream self was planning the launch of a new print magazine, something I’ve done in the past. There was a keen sense of excitement around the project.

After passing in and out of many doorways, I settled down at a table with my heavy load of bags.

What looked like the owner of an Italian restaurant came and sat opposite. He immediately questioned me about my affluence. “You make money so easily,” he insisted. “You just can’t stop. Money, money, money … How do you do it?”

Well, I awoke at that point with the words “money” and “affluence” ringing through my head, and a memory of a new print magazine, yet to appear. I really shouldn’t have to interpret these images for our readers.

Wargaming can happen automatically, as in this case. It can also be induced through a series of consciously-driven daydreams that invoke our extended minds to fill in the gaps where ignorance rules.

I believe this is an aspect of the “sixth sense” that primitive people are said to possess while hunting dangerous animals in the wild.

Wargaming is a great tool when mastered, and an invaluable guide to the future.

Twelve thousand lines of code?

Pah! Chickenfeed!

John Evans

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Lots of normally sensible people are looking around them and spying green shoots growing fast in the June sunshine. In the circumstances, it’s easy to imagine the economy improving in tandem. The national mood rises significantly in the summer months.

Well it isn’t. A new report shows that far from prices beginning to rise in Britain — a sign of growing demand — real “inflation” is actually minus ten percent compared with last year.

To add to the peril out there, the European Union is about to set off another wave of the interminable credit crunch as its banking system shivers on the brink of another catastrophic fall from grace.

World markets are responding accordingly. Wall Street is tanking, banks hugging their cash all over again, and those Will o’the wisps, the credit rating agencies, are picking off Spanish financial institutions at will. Some 25 were downgraded by Moodys only the other day.

With EU banks needing to roll over hundreds of billions of debt this year, the picture looks very bleak, a view endorsed by the IMF over the weekend.

Enthusiasts for a “V” shaped end to the recession are already behind the curve. A “U” bend is looking increasingly untenable. A wipeout winter, leading to a wobbly “W” is now much more likely.

Former British Chancellor, Norman Lamont’s phantom green shoots of the early 1990s are once again fooling the credulous and the desperate.

It’s now clear that Gordon Brown’s hope for a heavenly reprieve is pork pie in the sky. If he delays an election announcement beyond his party conference in October, he will be forced to admit that his efforts “to save the world” were vain and costly mistakes.

This is going to be longer and harder than anyone is allowing themselves to believe — with honourable exceptions.

On top of all its other woes, Britain’s world-beating financial centre, the City of London, is now the subject of a takeover move by the European Union.

Brussels wants to regulate out all its “Anglo-Saxon” tendencies and replace them with great chunks of French law.

Who the hell do they think they are?

More to the point, why hasn’t Gordon Brown gone into battle in the City’s defence? He bled it dry for 10 years, drove it onto the rocks with his insatiable appetite for taxes to fund his super-obese public sector, and now appears to have abandoned it in its hour of need.

Lord Myners, a minor player in the business departments of state, is making squeaking noises about protecting the hedge funds. Eighty percent of the world’s funds are situated in London, mostly in Mayfair. They count for 40,000 jobs and a lot of income.

The envious politicians on the other side of the Channel would love to smite the whole wealth-creation operation of the City in favour of their own tiddlers.

You can see the Labour plan, can’t you? Myners will get a few scraps on hedge funds and Brown will make a big fuss about it.

Beneath, in the thick undergrowth, he will tacitly accept raft upon raft of EU interference in Britain’s vibrant financial services industry.

A British Gulliver will be pegged out by European Liiliputians, while Brown proclaims a triumph for his diplomacy.

The Tories will not want to be seen to support the unpopular bankers and fund managers, so will keep quiet while this outrage is pushed through.

Isn’t it time for the Conservative leadership to show some real grit over this? It was Brown who presided over the banking collapse. David Cameron and George Osborne should be fighting tooth and nail for its future and restoration to buoyant health.

St George didn’t slay the dragon with a swizzle stick.

Dan Brown’s new film, Angels and Demons, is on its noisy way to a cinema near you.

After reading, and mostly enjoying, The Da Vinci Code, despite its elasticated clangers and howlers, I couldn’t resist reading his earlier religious thriller.

Angels is actually a more gripping tale than Da Vinci, with settings inside the Vatican and the European research centre, CERN. However, back-to-back reading of the two novels show they have almost identical plots.

The hero of both is Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious iconography. In both cases he’s woken by a strange request to hightail it immediately to Europe to sort out a brutal, ritualistic murder, in which various symbols play a mysterious part.

In the two novels, the daughter of the murdered man plays a central role (the sex interest). In each case the plot’s main feature is to track down shadowy organizations (the Illuminati and the Priory of Sion), both holders of arcane knowledge that threatens the Roman Church and civilization as we know it.

The plots are driven by a series of ingenious clues, containing codes and allusions which only a person of Langdon’s specialty can solve. Naturally he does so, and the novels move to inevitable, breathless, and breathtaking conclusions.

For all the craft and guile with which they are written, both are as formulaic as any television soap opera.

Dan, you wouldn’t be using one of those computer programs for plotting a bestselling novel would you? If you are, could you please tell me which one?

Britain has just been treated to the first open hustings for the position of Speaker of the House of Commons, a post ranked third in the UK’s order of precedence after the Queen and the Prime Minister.

Following the dismally inarticulate Michael Martin, a host of hopefuls buzzed around for our attention.

John Bercow, a Tory supported by many Labour MPs — make of that what you will — was predictably gruesome, lacking all stature, accomplishment and gravitas. If he’s elected, David Cameron should mount a coup against him after the next election. His administration would be tarnished by a hobgoblin in the chair.

Now that Frank Field is out of the running, only one candidate stands out, Sir Patrick Cormack.

Margaret Beckett would do a good job, I suspect, but really the House needs to purge itself of all Labour influence in the next Parliament if it is to regain the nation’s respect and trust.

Sir Patrick would have the right amount of weightiness, in both senses, a grasp of history and how it plays its role in the British Constitution, plus a backbencher’s drive to make his mark. The expenses row will diminish, we believe, when Christopher Kelly’s report is adopted in full, as it must be.

What the House needs now is a magnificent Speaker. It doesn’t need an elf. This is not Lord of the Rings

The other week, William Rees-Mogg wrote an insightful piece on how differently politics looks from his native Somerset.

A rural county, with a very ancient history, one of the top concerns of its inhabitants is bovine TB and what to do about the badgers thought to cause it.

David Cameron apparently gave a good account of himself on the topic at the county show when repeatedly asked about bovine TB. His own constituency of Witney in Oxfordshire has many of the same concerns.

One can’t imagine a single figure in the Labour government who would have a clue about cows.

We remember well that old townie Nick Brown in wellies and rubberized mac standing forlornly in a field of mud and muck after he was suddenly shot into the agriculture job by Tony Blair during the Foot and Mouth outbreak.

It’s the same in my own county of Devon. Westminster seems an age away in another timezone. I can’t recall the name of the Conservative agriculture spokesman, and looking it up on the internet would be cheating.

Let’s hope he (or she) at the very least sits for a rural constituency.

Hilary Clinton was wise to stay out of the Iranian election debacle. Whatever she said would only harden the stance of those seeking to retain power.

Western verbal interventions may make the intervener seem sympathetic and helpful, but do nothing for those fighting against tyranny on the ground.

Only an open free market system has the strength to topple dictators since they can’t possibly control what they don’t understand. We can’t expect ancient theocracies to turn into democracies overnight. It took us in the West long enough.

At least, that’s what we thought.

Something enormous is happening in Iran right now that may heave that process along. Bloggers and Twitterers are feeding out information from all over the country, undermining the State line. You can follow the Twitter stream at Twitter.com by clicking on #IranianElection.

New media is virtually unstoppable in the modern world. Even a clunky technology like fax served to push perestroika along in Soviet Russia as the samizdats cut through the grip of State information sources.

We in the West should stand back while new waves of freedom fighters strive to disrupt tyranny by information rather than violence.

They may just succeed, or ensure the next lot of leaders are much more moderate.

John Evans

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To take our collective minds off the beastly business of Brown and bung politics, here are some rambling thoughts on two obscure, but interesting, authors.

Our new website, Devon & Cornwall Online (launching on the Solstice, June 21) has provided a welcome opportunity to delve more deeply into West Country ways, especially a very special group of writers, Cornish authors.

They are surprisingly underrated, although they include such well-known bestsellers as Daphne Du Maurier and Derek Tangye, of Minack fame.

However, I want to indulge myself with two of my favourites: Denys Val Baker and Crosbie Garstin.

Denys Val Baker
Denys is rarely heard of nowadays, but if you ever come across one of his books: acquire, read, enjoy.

Denys Val Baker (1917 – 1984), owner and editor of The Cornish Review, was the author of 20 hilarious autobiographies. Titles included, The Sea’s in the Kitchen and The Petrified Mariner, which give you a flavour of them.

He wrote in the 1950s through the 70s, and was a full-time professional author, by which I mean he was always broke.

Nevertheless, he managed to buy an enormous old tramp steamer, MVS Sanu, and, with no sailing experience whatever, took his large brood of wild children and long-suffering wife, Jess, on incredibly dangerous voyages. He was on the rocks more times than Jack Daniels.

Denys lived in Penzance, Land’s End and St. Ives in Cornwall, and was usually seeking some means of financing his next outrageous project. He was an adventurer in the grand English tradition, although always amusingly shambolic.

In the old days, when libraries were libraries, you could find his books on the shelves. These days they’re not so easy to come by, although Amazon has a good listing of second-hand titles, mostly at premium prices. Denys would have been proud. If you want a really good humorous read, do seek them out.

His character never allowed a moment to pass without doing something absolutely beyond the pale. When I lived in Penzance, we occupied a house across the road from his, although he had been dead for a decade. There was no blue plaque on his house, which is a pity, although everyone remembered him in the library, where he did most of his research.

At the time I was there (late 1990s) his son still ran a print business in the town, and his wildest daughter, Demelza, lived there too.

Denys was one of the old school of writers. He spent a lot of time in London, mostly in the literary pubs around Soho where he hung out with the likes of Dylan Thomas and other luminaries of the scribbling fraternity. But his heart was in Cornwall, as was most of his written output. He will be best remembered for his 20 or so autobiographies.

Gerald Durrell is probably the nearest comparison. Let’s hope he will not be totally forgotten, especially in the county that inspired his best work.

Crosbie Garstin
Crosbie Garstin is best known for his trilogy of novels about the Penhales family, published before the last war by Heinemann.

The Owls’ House, High Noon and The West Wind are all cracking adventures set in Cornwall and on the high seas in the days of sail. China Seas, his last book, continued the genre, and was made into a Hollywood film starring, I believe, Clark Gable.

Garstin was an interesting character, a true adventurer and traveller. He served during the first world war in King Edward’s Horse and was commissioned on the battlefield in 1915.

His early years were spent working in lumber camps in Canada, as a ranger in Africa, a miner on the Pacific coast, and as an army horsemaster and intelligence officer.

He was, by all accounts, a very private man (I can’t find a photograph of him on the internet) and, at the age of 40, he bought “Rosemerryn”, a house in Cornwall, near Penzance.

The fictional home of the Penhales family, “Bosula” in The Owls’ House, is almost certainly located on the site of Rosemerryn. Set in the Keigwin Valley, six miles south-west of Penzance, the valley drains the Penwith backbone of tors into Monks Cove, the physical setting for the novels.

Just down the way, towards Penzance, is the fishing port of Newlyn, which doubled-up then as a world-famous artists’ colony, boasting its own art movement. Garstin wrote this vivid rondeau about Newlyn Hill :

On Newlyn Hill the gorse is bright;
Upon the hedgerows left and right
Song-dizzy birds the Spring-time greet;
The bluebells weave a purple sheet;
Primroses star the lanes’ green night.
Across the Bay each moorland height
Glows golden in the evening light,
And Dusk walks violet-eyed and sweet
On Newlyn Hill.

A swarm of lights, pearl-soft and white,
A fairy-lamp-land exquisite,
Opens its star-eyes at the feet
Of hills where shore and wavelets meet;
Then dreams come, mystic, infinite,
On Newlyn Hill.

Newlyn now is but a shadow of its former self thanks to the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy. I don’t think he would be amused.

It’s difficult to get hold of Garstin’s books now, but I managed to entreat copies of the trilogy from Penzance library’s reference section a few years ago for a writing project, and I wasn’t disappointed. Sadly, he has rather sunk without trace in recent years. Not even the Cornish remember him, except for a few beavering upcountry literatis.

In 1930 he vanished without trace. Nobody really knows what happened to him. Some say he faked his death and went back to the East where he had spent his youth.

It seems likely though that he drowned while rowing back to a friend’s yacht after a party. The boat overturned and a woman friend survived. His body was never found although he was a strong swimmer. Presciently, the final page of his last book, China Seas, written in his study at Rosemerryn overlooking a bank of rhododendrons, has this death scene :

“Heavily he sank beside her … felt her arms go round him clinging desperately as to the last refuge in a yawning sea … A bank of rhododendrons with crimson flowers … fading fast, fading away.”

Even better, at the conclusion of his trilogy, the death of his hero, Penhales, drowning in the sea off the Twelve Apostles rocks in Cornwall, is one of the best death scenes in all literature :

“The boom of the surf was the deep roll of drums. The wind blew with the sound of trumpets, piercing, exultant. The phantom clippers dipped their gilded beaks, most stately, the ghostly soldiers tossed their lances, ‘Come on, old comrade,’ they cried. ‘Fear not! Death is but a pang and life immortal. Ride on with us, ride on forever.’”

Cornwall inspires mysticism in its writers and inhabitants. It’s a shame those upcountry folk in the London salons don’t give it more attention.

It’s better than politics.

John Evans

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There comes a moment in the fight game when an old boxer refuses to give up out of misplaced pride, but everyone present can see he’s taking too much punishment to continue. At that point the referee steps in and declares an end to the fight.

I never thought I would feel sorry for Gordon Brown, given the weight of punishment beatings he’s dished out over the years, but inexplicably I almost do.

This is not a time to gloat over his demise. For demise it is. Deservedly, he will be cast into the outest of outer darknesses, more so than that other failed Prime Minister, Edward Heath.

He’s the worst there is, has been, and maybe even ever will be. His tragic baggage is that he doesn’t yet know it — or the bit of his mind that pokes out of the top doesn’t.

Gordon Brown has presided for 12 years over the destruction of everything we prize and hope to pass on to future generations.

His personality is so unsuited to high office only the Labour party would think of offering it to him.

Today at PMQs, Nick Clegg got it right. The choice is now between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. “Labour is finished.”

People and parties have a habit of hanging on in there even when there’s no hope left. Some thread to the past convinces them they can repeat what has gone before.

At some point, though, even they stop believing and contemplate throwing in the towel. Yet, if the smallest fragment of hope remains, and no-one intervenes to put them out of their misery, the agony goes on. Known pain is better than the unknown and total oblivion.

What Gordon Brown needs now is to be fished out of the drowning waters, and a kindly fisherman administer the gaffe with the necessary force.

Hazel Blears seemed to know that today. So do the other top Labour women. When the crones pronounce you dead, you are deadly dead.

Who will fish Brown out of his homemade hell? It’s time for the Queen to step in and represent the nation’s most ardent wish to be rid of this man.

May he rest in peace, but let it be quick.

John Evans

PS: Yes, politics is back here in Syntagma. Death is too weighty a subject not to pronounce upon.

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I’ve decided to give up writing about politics on this site. The reason is that, with a new business to run, there simply isn’t time.

Writing about politics is an all-consuming activity. It glues you to 24-hour news almost 24/7. It entices you to read all the serious newspapers and political magazines every day of the year. Add to that, time spent trawling the internet, Googling for clarifications and chasing up leads, plus the background research and fact-checking.

Instead, Syntagma will revert to type and concentrate on a melange of finance, philosophy and technology as in days of yore.

I know I shall be tempted to dip inky fingers into the increasingly murky waters as the British General Election gets near, but be assured Reader, my resolve will hold.

Except, of course, to raise a hearty cheer, and glass, when David Cameron walks into 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister.

The rest is silence …

John Evans

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If you have a large enough garden you might decide to employ a professional gardener to tend it for you.

But what if the gardener outsourced, say, three-quarters of the work to someone else, sent in the bill for it, while also invoicing you for the original, agreed amount? Might you not regard that as fraudulent?

Parliament has form in defrauding the public that goes back before the current deceitful expenses row. It has outsourced three-quarters of its legislative responsibilities to Brussels, sending us the bill, while expecting to receive a stonking good salary, plus allowances, for the small segment of lawmaking they have retained. It’s blatant fraud.

There is now a sizeable majority in England for a trade-only deal with the EU, regaining complete control of political and legislative matters.

Gordon Brown’s response, like his predecessor Tony Blair’s, is to rat on a promised referendum and sign yet more powers away in the Lisbon Treaty.

That, surely, exceeds even the grubbly antics of this Scottish mafia over MP’s expenses?

In PMQs on Wednesday, Gordon Brown slipped in a very Old Labour phrase that seemed to go unnoticed by everyone else. I watched the recording again on the BBC’s iPlayer to make certain I had heard it correctly.

In the first few minutes of the session, Brown answered a question by Gregory Campbell MP. He said:

“An investment of £600 million into Northern Ireland advances the public works programme and helps the unemployed.”

Public works? When was the last time those words were used in political discourse by a senior Cabinet Minister in Britain?

Redolent of a creaking Keynesianism of the “Stuff cash into beer bottles, bury them and employ workers to dig them up” variety, it harks back to the 1930s, with maybe a whisper or two from the 70s.

Was it a Freudian slip by the Prime Minister, or an indication of his current reading? Here’s Wikipedia on public works:

“… public works projects are characteristic of socialism. … in the private sector, entrepreneurs bear their own losses and so private sector firms are generally unwilling to undertake projects that could result in losses. Since it is politically unpopular for governments to use public revenues to bail out private firms that lose money … the preferred alternative is to have governments undertake unprofitable projects directly.”

Talk about reverting to type. Brown has lost all hold on reality.

Recent research suggests that women only ever listen to gossip and other juicy snippets from within their circle. They ignore everything else.

Men might well feel outraged that their lengthy explanations of defects in various cars, or the football team they support, fall on deaf ears.

But, hold on. What is “gossip” in the scheme of things?

Gossip is ultra-local news, so minor it’s never reported in the news media. The goings-on within a street or small village are hardly going to make the pages of the local rag, nor unduly bother the stringers employed by the nationals.

It falls to members of the inner circle to distribute this micro-news to others who may be interested in it. Thus the ladies are fulfilling a necessary social purpose in gossiping over the garden fence.

So, chaps, when your nearest and dearest is ignoring your latest theory on Formula One and passing on a seemingly irrelevant nougat of information about Janice down the road, just think of her as a citizen journalist, mopping up the news that others won’t touch.

Carry on girls.

Continuing the theme of women talking to each other, I listened to part of a radio debate last week between two survivors of the feminist movement of the 1970s. Much was familiar, a lot was old hat. We really have moved on from all that angst now.

One phrase jarred on me though: “a patriarchal society”.

Visions of a Biblical scene swam before my mind’s eye. Against a background of camels and sand, a wild figure is leading his tribe to the promised land. Along the way he gives them their laws, shapes their way of life, and predicts 9/11 centuries hence. He looks a bit like Charlton Heston.

But wait! Aren’t we being led by a patriarchal character now in the shape of Gordon Brown? Doesn’t he rule Downing Street with an iron staff, beating back any who disagree with a fusillade of flying objects, from Nokias to laser printers?

Isn’t his writ the Word of Gord? Does He not interpret the very signs from Heaven for us, his people, while expecting little reward except £6000 for his cleaner, furnishings for his third home, and exemption from capital gains tax for his house sales?

On second thoughts, maybe he’s more like the leader of a group of gorillas in the Cameroon rain forest.

Those big fellas can be very patriarchal.

There are two types of politician in Scotland.

The Tory type is urbane, slightly patrician, well educated, and tends to improve the tone of the Westminster Parliament. Think Malcolm Rifkind, Michael Forsyth, Liam Fox, and others.

The Labour type, which predominates, is mainly working class, of trades union heritage, and cut his teeth in the one-party State that was, and to some extent still is, modern Scotland. Think Gordon Brown and Speaker Michael Martin.

Before devolution, Scottish politics existed largely at local level. Labour dominated, with little opposition to hold it in check. The result was that corruption, mafia methodologies and intimidation have been its defining charcteristics for decades.

Now we have the fruits of this system in Westminster. Gordon Brown rules by intimidation, ruthlessly cutting down his opponents by destroying their reputations, often with grotesque lies, and maintains an iron grip on policy matters down to the finest detail. In a modern technological society that is a recipe for disaster.

Disaster is what we’ve got.

What did the English — some 85 percent of the population — do to deserve 12 or 13 years of this outrage?

One thing’s for certain, the Constitution should be changed to ensure no one like Brown ever gets into a senior post in British government again.

It would be a pity to keep out the patrician type though, but that may be a price we have to pay.

With the Tories around 22 percent ahead in the opinion polls and Labour disintegrating before our eyes, the prospects for the European Parliamentary elections on June 4 look promising for the centre-right.

They will be held concurrently with English County elections and a few other polls. My own County, Devon, looks set to go Conservative on a minimum 3 percent swing. It will be a bloody few days for Labour.

The aftermath will not be any better for them. A group of Blairites and leftwingers is said to be plotting to bring Brown down and replace him with … who? Old Charlie Clarke looks the best bet, and probably the only one willing to stand. Unless Hattie … let’s not go there.

Let them meditate on Winston Churchill who, in 1940 and 41 “nothing common did, or mean / Upon that memorable scene.”

John Evans

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Have a great Mayday weekend. See you on Monday.

John Evans