Creeping with the enemy

IT’S JUST before midnight and I’m crawling silently through the undergrowth wearing a balaclava, camouflage pants and black face paint

On the other side of the valley, the enemy lookout post seems quiet. But you can’t be too careful. There’s a lot at stake here.

At last I’m in position. I breathe in and pull the trigger. The spray of precious liquid showers down on the hellebores. This is how we water our gardens in Britain 2006.

Now I don’t know for a fact that old Mrs Wozniac in the house across the way is a snout for the water board, but I don’t want to take any chances. A man of my public standing doesn’t really want to be hauled through the courts and exposed as a threat to society. And 1,800 people have already been grassed up to Thames Water by their neighbours for the heinous crime of illegally using a hosepipe.

It’s not very British, is it? What would you rather do on a spring day – enjoy a glass of chilled Chardonnay in your garden, or lurk behind twitching net curtains with a video camera in case the bloke next door decides to wash his Skoda?

And so the Powers That Be find yet another way to criminalise the law-abiding middle classes. We’ve already got speed cameras on every corner, we can go to jail for smacking our kids and we’ll soon face a fine for sparking up a gasper in a public place. Now we face arrest for nurturing the narcissus. Or narcissi.

I’m not surprised that the number of Brits jetting off to Florida has dramatically declined. Given the American immigration service’s attitude to criminal records, there can’t be many of us left who can still get a visa.

ONE PERSON who doesn’t seem to have any problem jetting around the world is the Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett. Only she chooses to do it in the planes of the Queen’s Flight, rather than endure the orange hell that is Easyjet.

It appears that in the past three years Mrs Beckett has made use of the Queen’s Flight on no fewer than 110 occasions. She is even in the habit of ordering a jet to fly up from its base at RAF Northolt to pick her up at East Midlands Airport, near her constituency, before clearing off to Brussels.

You couldn’t find a clearer example of how power can tend to corrupt than this. When Mrs Beckett first took her place in government she was, to all intents and purposes, an unpretentious caravanner whose only travel crime was to block the A38 on a Bank Holiday Monday. She is also in charge of the department that regularly lectures us on how the advent of cheap air travel is destroying the ozone layer.

Now we find that she’s clocking up the air miles faster than Richard Branson, and at public expense as well.

Of course her boss isn’t exactly shy when it comes to choosing opulence over economy. His travel log is even more impressive, with 670 Royal flights since 1997, many of them taking himself, Cherie and the kids off on another freebie holiday.

The natural stance of NuLabour when forced to admit such spendthrift behaviour is to lie until its spokesmen are blue in the face. So it was that we were reliably informed that it costs only £1,200 to use a Royal jet to get to Brussels when it would have cost £1,300 to send a party of five via Eurostar. What utter tosh.

From my very preliminary investigations (a chat with a commercial pilot in the snug of the Dog and Blunkett) I can tell you that £1,200 would just about cover the fuel involved. It takes no account of landing fees, staff costs, capital costs or depreciation. A fairer estimate would be four times that figure.

Why does nobody get angry about this bare-faced sham? Have we all grown so accustomed to being lied to that it doesn’t matter any more? No wonder our political masters look down and laugh at us as they fly overhead.

THE DEPUTY head who claimed £1million compensation because she had to sit on a “flatulent” chair has lost her case. Give thanks ... but not for long.

It emerged this week that members of just one of the six teaching unions were paid a horrendous £7.6million in compensation for assaults by pupils or for injuries sustained in the course of their duties in 2005. The mind truly boggles.

Awards included £27,000 for a teacher in London who was assaulted by a 12-year-old and £129,600 for a teacher in Preston who was injured when a brick was thrown at her head.

Now nobody would argue that these aren’t serious cases, but doesn’t the teaching profession itself have some responsibility for what appears to be a complete breakdown of discipline in the classroom?

Modern teaching methods, the abandonment of school uniform, overly-liberal attitudes and a lack of commitment to the profession by the professionals are more to blame for unruly kids than single mothers, video games and a diet of oven chips and Pot Noodles.

O The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this website, of anyone who doesn't want to punch Sayed from The Apprentice very hard in the face, of anyone who's surprised that Ruth Badger from The Apprentice is a "wearer of sensible shoes", or of the couple who sent me a wedding invitation last week and asked for money towards their honeymoon instead of a present. Sod that. I'm buying them an African goat.