I'm not laughing

I AM NO humorist but I have read about one or two of the tricks that jokesters and wits use to create a joke.

For example, start at the end of the joke with, say, a well-known phrase, such as the standard phrases we hear at the end of news broadcasts.

So, ‘police have nothing to go on’ can be placed at the end of spoof report on the theft of lavatory pans. Or ‘police are looking into it’ will close a report on the discovery of a consignment of pornography. Or, ‘government steps in’ in response to a sewage leak in Scunthorpe. (It’s never a bad idea to include Scunthorpe. Wigan’s good too; so is Tunbridge Wells in the right context).

Another trick is one that Oscar Wilde used quite frequently, namely that of turning a phrase, preferably a cliché or pompous statement, on its head. Thus, ‘drink is the curse of the working classes’ becomes ‘work is the curse of the drinking classes.’ I particularly like that one for some reason. Another one of the same type is 'If one tells the truth, then sooner or later one will be found out.'

IT’S NO JOKE though what I’ve heard coming out of ministerial mouths recently. That old Stalinist, John Reid, for example, reacted to the disappearance of a few control order suspects – sheer incompetence on the part of the authorities – by calling yet again for 90 day detention powers. Gordon Brown disabused us of any hopes of a revival of civil liberties by echoing Kommissar Reid’s remarks. Even in his political death throes, Tony Blair is calling for a return to the old ‘sus laws’, allowing the police to stop anyone on the street and ask impertinent questions. That will fit nicely with ID cards. ID cards! Christ, even dogs don’t need licenses any more.

We in this country have blithely disregarded the subtle slicing away of our freedoms for years. We can’t visit a pub or a shop or walk down the street or drive a car without appearing on CCTV; our e-mails, phone calls and text messages are monitored by GCHQ; the police are building up a DNA bank of innocent people; rape trials are being rigged in favour of the complainant and double jeopardy is disappearing fast. Forget habeas corpus.

WHY do we put up with the death of our democracy by a thousand cuts? Partly laziness and complacency, partly because of the belief that’s been allowed to grow that government is responsible for everything. Name any problem and we expect a solution from the government.

Yesterday, for example, the head of some government agency outlined her plans to improve standards of courtesy. She actually recommended that we each ‘do a good deed every day.’ Can you believe it?

But the main reason why we tamely submit is fear. Fear of crime, fear of illegal immigration, fear of paedophiles, and fear of terrorism. Fear subtly promoted by government whose very nature is to garner increasing power to itself. Elizabeth I had her Jesuits, William Pitt had Boney, Lloyd George and Churchill had fifth columnists and McCarthy had a red under every bed. Tony Blair has Osama bin Laden, who so far has killed fewer of us in his whole campaign than we have ourselves on the roads of Lincolnshire.

I THINK Oscar would have said that we have been lulled into a false sense of insecurity.