Let's all go down the pub with the Bishop of Southwark

I TRY not to be resentful about those City bankers (rhyming slang) who have just collected their million-pound bonuses, but it can be a bit difficult. At least I need not envy those who’ve booked a “trip of a lifetime” to Australia to watch what remains of The Ashes.

I can only imagine that they’re busy cancelling their hotels as we speak and instead booking a fortnight at Sandy Lane in Barbados, despite the risk of bumping into Michael Winner in his Speedos.

One group of people who aren’t going to worry too much about their Antipodean odyssey turning sour are the 14 MPs (and their wives in the case of the rare heterosexual ones) who are flying out on a subsidised tour tomorrow which includes bungee-jumping in New Zealand, shopping in Hong Kong and the odd bit of cricket in Melbourne and Sydney.

To you, Squire, a snip at £3,000. Actual cost, once all the freebies and hospitality have been removed, nearer six grand. Nice work if you can get it.

Of course, £3,000 would be beyond the pockets of most ordinary people, but not if you’re on £60k (demanding an increase to £100k) and “expenses” of a further £130,000 on average.

You know, there used to be an afternoon’s amusement in the House of Commons on the day that our elected members had to argue their case, in public, for an inflation-busting pay rise. I seem to remember people like Enoch Powell and Tony Benn causing huge embarrassment to their colleagues by objecting to any increase that would take the dishonourable members beyond the minimum wage.

These days it’s all different. Because they didn’t like having to argue their case in the full glare of the public eye, the issue of MPs’ pay was passed to a sub-committee of the civil service. Now they can bleat away about deserving the same money as GPs without having to stand up on their hind legs while exposing themselves to the ridicule of their constituents.

It’s snouts in the trough as usual. Nothing ever changes, except that they now get to fill their pockets without blushing when they’re next trying to explain to Mrs Trellis from North Wales why Gordon Brown’s run off with her pension.

NOW HERE’S a rare thing for this column – a true story. I was invited to the House of Lords for lunch last week as part of a charitable concern in which I’m involved. (No, it’s not Chinese Girls With Herpes.)

As it happens, I had to leave the house in the dark and only realised once I’d arrived at the station that I was wearing a blue pin-striped suit jacket and grey pin-striped suit trousers. Under normal circumstances, I’d have killed myself rather than undergo the embarrassment of such a fashion faux pas. But instinct told me that I might just get away with it.

Dear Reader, I need not have worried. I spent the best part of three hours in the House of Lords without anyone giving me a second glance. To be fair, I looked more normal than most of the Upper House. There were people in carpet slippers, smoking jackets and the kind of tweed suits that have not only seen service on the grouse moor, but have been used to carry back the dead birds as well.

But what did impress me was the honesty with which these people went about their jobs. They might be hereditary peers or they might be NuLabour placemen, but there was a genuine feeling that their role was a very real check and balance on the simplistic, knee-jerking, law-making process of Mr Blah’s glib and gutless government.

It’s something to think about the next time you’re told that there’s no need for such back up.

THERE’S SOMETHING inspiring about life when there’s a drunken Bishop running riot in London.

I refer, of course, to the Right Reverend Tom Butler, the Bishop of Southwark, who overdid the cheeky Rioja at a reception at the Irish Embassy and was later found rampaging around the streets trying to climb into the back of people’s cars and then, the next day, claiming that he’d been mugged as a means of explaining away his UDIs (unidentified drinking injuries).

Let’s face it: who hasn’t done the same, especially at this time of year. I find it encouraging that the Church is taking greater steps to get in touch with the common people. Coming next, the Archbishop of Canterbury offers to sort out anyone who might have been looking at him a bit funny while the Archbishop of York staggers through a crowded Weatherspoons shouting: “Did you spill my pint?” Marvellous stuff.

WOOH! STEP away from the spontaneously combusting children!

There has been a Christingle service held at Chelmsford Cathedral since 1747. In all that time, there is no record of a small child catching fire due to the “candle stuck in an orange” combo that is customary at these events.

Let’s fast forward to 2006, where a man called Richard Spilsbury, one of the organisers, has decreed that this year the kids must carry fluorescent glow-sticks rather than the traditional burning candle. “Some parents have raised concerns about their children’s hair catching fire,” he says.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. Show me a single parent who has “raised concerns”. It’s the Health and Safety Nazis in action again. And let’s face it, if we do lose the odd five-year-old in a tangerine inferno, isn’t it worth it just to maintain these old traditions?

Meanwhile the Jokeforce, the government-funded organisation that provides material for satirical columnists, has been out and about in Preston, where a pantomime society has been banned from throwing sweets into the audience in case they injure someone.

So there you go. Never mind your child being mown down by a 4x4 outside their school. Never mind your child being murdered by the East Stranglia. Let’s just worry about them being consumed by Christingle flames or being laid low by a flying Werther’s Original.

It’s enough to make a cat laugh.

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 surprised that Mr Blah arranged to be interviewed by the police at the exact moment the Princess Di report was unveiled, of anyone who doesn't think that Jonathan Ross has jumped the shark, or of anyone who hasn't heard about the dyslexic Santa who's been leaving prossies under trees in Ipswich.