It is clearly recycling day in Islington

I'll add the link when it goes up on the blog, but there are a lot of "old friends" in Nick's column in the paper Standard this week. Supercasinos, BritArt is offensive and doesn't appeal to me, and over-zealous traffic wardens (I think that "over-zealous traffic wardens" might be close to some sort of long service award if it appears many more times). The main bit is on loans for lordships and how it's absolutely ludicrous for people to demand a forensic standard of proof before we start saying "there's something a bit dodgy there". Which is obviously the AW party line too (unless one of you guys disagrees), so fair enough. However there is a bit of a Seal O' Dacre alert, because the way that Nick phrases this is to say:

"[...] as soon as we start asking why it was that Bernie Ecclestone, Enron, Lakshmi Mittal and all the rest of the crew gave gifts then got rewards, some buck-toothed, empty-headed public-school boy from the BBC pops up and sneers: "Where's your smoking gun? Where's your proof beyond reasonable doubt?""

This is a bit weird; the BBC has done a perfectly fine job on these stories although some people in the media (coughAarocough) haven't. The only BBC employee who I can think of who is buck-toothed and public school is Michael Crick and he certainly doesn't deserve this charge.

Why the hell is it that the BBC is, in Nick's mind, the perfect synecdoche for the upper middle class, the media, and a whole lot of other strange little psychological complexes? Surely this is not just about Gilligan and the war, is it? Who at the BBC has pissed in Nick's cornflakes recently? Own up in comments if it was you.

Update BD 11:49 pm 24/3/06. Here's the link: An Inspector Calls. Nick's spent some time in the clippings library, or more likely on Google, though we shouldn't discount the possibility that his Oxford education is repeating on him like an ill-advised late night vindaloo. Here's Nick on the 81 years since the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925 which "made the buying and selling of honours a criminal offence that should carry a maximum punishment of two years in prison."

It has been left to the press to blow the whistle ever since.

Nick doesn't say who has left this duty to the press, or who else may have blown the whistle before the act. If anyone has, that person is Chai Patel (though not intentionally), which torpedoes Nick's statement. A later paragraph is just weird.

Independently minded MPs who want to do what MPs are meant to do and hold the executive to account are just as feeble. If your refuse to answer the questions of the US Congress, you can go to jail for contempt. If there’s a whiff of corruption about you in Italy, prosecutors and magistrates will storm in – as Tessa Jowell’s dumped husband has learned to his cost.

Nick doesn't say why the "[i]ndependently minded MPs... are just as feeble." He just asserts it and drops it into a paragraph where it seems to be followed by two more concrete facts. Except these aren't. Anyone remember anyone in the past 80 or so years who was held in contempt by Congress? Or any cases where this power actually led to someone answering incriminating questions? And if "prosecutors and magistrates" in Italy have "stormed in" anywhere, that's a use of storm as in a "storm in a marmite jar". They've been pursuing David Mills since around 1990. Blitzkreig it ain't.