Meddling Minty stokes the fires of British fascism

[Paul Rigby]

In his scabrous roman a clef, Greasing the Pole* (London: Anthony Gland, 2003), Sir Reginald Pike-Darkness offered a forensic portrait of New Labour eminence grise Minty Feltch.

Throughout the novel, Pike-Darkness drops progressively less subtle hints that Feltch is an MI6 asset; and that MI6 has an entirely healthy fascination with fascism. In the book’s dramatic closing scenes, Feltch is forced to chose between his Pole, his party and his spooks. I won’t spoil the denouement - for those lucky enough to have acquired the book before it was injuncted; or else from Underthecounter, the specialist Soho antiquarian bookshop (turn right on the landing of the London Rubber Emporium) – by reproducing the explanatory diagram which marks the book’s politico-erotic terminus.

I wish to make it abundantly clear that all the above has absolutely no relevance whatever to the article instanced below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...-mandelson

Has Labour handed Stoke to the BNP?

By Mark Seddon

With the BNP on the march in Stoke-on-Trent, why has Lord Mandelson parachuted in his chosen Labour candidate?

When New Labour was in its pomp and Peter Mandelson memorably remarked that those Labour supporters who didn't much like the new order would still back Labour because they "would have nowhere else to go", I wonder if he had the good city of Stoke-on-Trent in mind?

Somehow, I doubt it, for in recent years many working-class Labour voters in Stoke have been going somewhere else – notably to the British National party. Before a local defection this week, the BNP had eight councillors. Ten years ago, Labour held the city with 60 councillors. Today there are barely 13 – and only two of them in the cauldron that is the Stoke Central constituency.

Now, with an election barely weeks away, the BNP are standing their deputy leader, Simon Darby, in the constituency. Flush with European parliament money and smarter in his campaign techniques, the city is a key target for Darby, who not so long ago was pictured taking the fascist salute in Italy.

So what has been Labour's answer to the serried ranks of the far right? Why, it has been to hand them a gift they can only have dreamed of – a gerrymandered selection of a new Labour candidate, the TV historian Tristram Hunt. For when the respected local MP, Mark Fisher, decided to step down on health grounds a few weeks ago, instead of drawing up a broad-based list of candidates for local Labour members to choose from, Lord Mandelson, ever the plutocrat, simply made the choice for them

* The Pole in question, Radek Towiański, the Harvard-educated mystic and arms dealer, subsequently became Polish defence minister, with special emphasis on the nation’s uniformed youth. He is currently President of the lay organisation, Poles for the Papacy.

[David Guyatt]

Thanks for the clarification about the "Pole". Until that moment I had been thinking in a completely different direction (Wardour Street in fact).

Curiously enough, I have sent several MS to the difficult-to-please Anthony Gland with a view to publication. These included, but were not limited to, "Pole-vaulting: how to get your leg over unexpected obstacles", and "Toffee: does it really go soft when handled?".

Alas, each submission was met with a rejection slip.

[Paul Rigby]

Thanks for the clarification about the "Pole". Until that moment I had been thinking in a completely different direction (Wardour Street in fact).

I wish to make it clear that I have no knowledge of the lap-dancing establishment to which you refer; and most emphatically was not escorted from said premises on the night of April 1 for demanding the return of my expired credit card. Anyone who says otherwise will meeting my solicitor, Lex Mackem, quite probably in the Cock and Bottle public house, just before closing time. He'll leave the brown envelope under the day-old copy of the Daily Star.

Curiously enough, I have sent several MS to the difficult-to-please Anthony Gland with a view to publication. These included, but were not limited to, "Pole-vaulting: how to get your leg over unexpected obstacles", and "Toffee: does it really go soft when handled?".

Remarkable man, Tony. I had the privilege of meeting him, albeit at a time of some financial embarrassment following his unsuccessful libel action against Norman Balon, who had expelled him from his public house on the ground that the publisher was "a prize bore," in his temporary offices in Walthamstow in the summer of 1979.

I showed him my student organ, The Scouse Git, together with my cherished first manuscript, Northern Roots. His reply will stay with me forever: "What the f*ck makes you think I'm interested in a bloody history of Liverpool dentistry?"

Ah, what encouragement those sage words gave me. But I did get to see the first draft of his notorious Bookseller advert, "Put a first edition Gland in your hand..." I thought the accompanying photograph of Frankie Howard more sinister than amusing, and said so, a faux pas that prompted my immediate ejection, hotly pursued by bailiffs.

Gland's finances only recovered with the publication of what became a neo-con classic, Islam Sucks, by Yizak Krauthammer, in early 1983. Asked by Northbank presenter Arsene Blagg to recall his reaction to the first mention of this richly provocative title, Gland replied: "Lucky Mohammed." But what about the inevitable death threats, Blagg persisted. "I haven't issued any yet," replied the habitually sozzled Gland.

Alas, each submission was met with a rejection slip.

Just be grateful it wasn't a slip of the tongue. Gland really was a goat.

[Paul Rigby]

I wish to make it clear that I have no knowledge of the lap-dancing establishment to which you refer; and most emphatically was not escorted from said premises on the night of April 1 for demanding the return of my expired credit card. Anyone who says otherwise will meeting my solicitor, Lex Mackem, quite probably in the Cock and Bottle public house, just before closing time. He'll leave the brown envelope under the day-old copy of the Daily Star.

In the unhappy event poor old Lex is detained by court business – I refer, of course, to his politically-motivated prosecution following a terrible misunderstanding at Otterspool’s public urinal – “Boris” will do the necessary:

Russlan Fomichev, a financial aide to Mr Berezovsky, is said to have given a secret cash payment – delivered in a spy-style street ‘drop’ – to Michelle Young, who is at the centre of a bitter £400million split from her property developer husband Scott.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...vorce.html

[David Guyatt]

Mrs Young, 45, described how she was told by her husband in 2006 to meet Mr Fomichev, who would give her £10,000 towards her living expenses.
She said: ‘He said that I should go to Davies Street in Mayfair and wait outside the Toni & Guy hairdressing salon . . . a man drove up in a Porsche and stepped out.
'I recognised him from a photograph I had seen of him and Scott and knew that he had worked with a solicitor called Stephen Curtis in the sale of our Wentworth Park estate.
‘He asked if I was Michelle . . . then he handed me an envelope stuffed with banknotes.
‘He did look a little embarrassed. He got back in his car and drove away.’

To be strictly accurate, I think the hairdressing salon was Damien & Jason not Toni & Guy.

One wonders what this "Horsy" set woman knows that allows her to engage in such blackmail?

[Peter Presland]

Mrs Young, 45, described how she was told by her husband in 2006 to meet Mr Fomichev, who would give her £10,000 towards her living expenses.
She said: ‘He said that I should go to Davies Street in Mayfair and wait outside the Toni & Guy hairdressing salon . . . a man drove up in a Porsche and stepped out.
'I recognised him from a photograph I had seen of him and Scott and knew that he had worked with a solicitor called Stephen Curtis in the sale of our Wentworth Park estate.
‘He asked if I was Michelle . . . then he handed me an envelope stuffed with banknotes.
‘He did look a little embarrassed. He got back in his car and drove away.’

To be strictly accurate, I think the hairdressing salon was Damien & Jason not Toni & Guy.

One wonders what this "Horsy" set woman knows that allows her to engage in such blackmail?

Well I'm splitting my sides at the banter as usual - still think our DG and PR should collaborate on a new Monthy-Python-like venture. But the thing that jumped off the page of that Daily Mail article was the name 'Stephen Curtis'. Any involvement with that guy is pure bad news

He died in a helicopter crash near Bournmouth in 2005. Official investigation says accident/malfunction naturally enough. He was heavily involved with the whole arms to Iraq scandals of the 80's that enriched many Tory politicians/king-makers and spooks like Stephan Adolphus Kock - plus the largely abortive (because demonstrably corrupt) prosecutions of various businessmen in such firms as Matrix Churchill and Sheffield Forgemasters of the Gerald Bull (another dead man) supergun affair. It's what he cut his arms-dealing - oligarch-helping - generally crooked legal manipulating on in fact.

[David Guyatt]

God Peter, don't get me started on Kock.

I remember the Curtis helicopter death, that connected to the whole Yukos oil affair that appeared to include senior members of the House of Rothchilds and which itself connected to the Clearstream and Bank Menatap story of Ernest Backes - apparenetly a BND asset - and Lucy Komisar, freelance journalist who seems to keep company with men in trench-coats from Virginia.

What I think that Daily Mail article must be referencing is ongoing massive money laundering and high end crookedness.

Btw Paul, I just wish to fix a typo in your earlier post. Your solicitor usually meets in the Cock Inn Bottle public house, not the Cock and Bottle. I quite understand why this little typo slipped into the story, but as you well know Lex Mackem's court date is now close and disbarment is quite likely. Doing his business in the gentleman's lavatory at Holborn Tube station is regarded as demeaning his profession (that is to say "stated" profession). Quite rightly so in my opinion.

[Paul Rigby]

God Peter, don't get me started on Kock.

As the sometime actress once remarked to the defrocked Bishop...

Btw Paul, I just wish to fix a typo in your earlier post. Your solicitor usually meets in the Cock Inn Bottle public house, not the Cock and Bottle. I quite understand why this little typo slipped into the story, but as you well know Lex Mackem's court date is now close and disbarment is quite likely. Doing his business in the gentleman's lavatory at Holborn Tube station is regarded as demeaning his profession (that is to say "stated" profession). Quite rightly so in my opinion.

Phew, for a moment there Lex was quite convinced the penalty was dismemberment, an all together more frightening prospect. Now, where did I leave my bottle of Bishop's Finger, the only ecclesiastical digit any sane man can today repose any trust in?

[David Guyatt]

Below is a competition from the monthly magazine The Clerical Digit.

Fraters and Fraterettes (if absolutely necessary!) are invited to send in answers to the following puzzle: which of the two below quotes is correct (no Google cheating though).

Quote 1

Beer is patient, beer is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Beer does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

1 Corinthians 13

Quote 2

[Paul Rigby]

I am forcefully reminded of the Gland pamphlet symposium, “Conservatism in Crisis?” which appeared in the summer of 1963.

The opening salvo in the series, the Pike-Darkness penned “Are We All Masked Perverts?*,” meditated, among other things, on the Tory obsession with political “bottom.” To illustrate his point, Pike-Darkness recalled his first encounter with Sir Herbert Butterfield, who sidled up to him at a Cambridge meeting of the Young Conservatives and demanded to know if a young up-and-comer had a capacious one. “I wouldn’t know,” replied a momentarily perplexed P-D, “I’ve never kissed an Oxford arse.” Butterfield eyed him thoughtfully: “But you will one day, dear boy, if you hope to get on, you will.” History does not record Edward Heath’s thoughts on this exchange.

Incidentally, the second contribution to the series emanated from the hand of Mr. Anthony Earl Williams. “On Hampstead Heath by Moonlight” proposed “the cane and religion” as the twin-panaceas for Britain’s moral decline, as epitomised by the nocturnal activities AEW had observed there over many years. It remains a spanking good read, particularly after confession.

*Pike-Darkness found in the negative, for, as he explained, “Neither I, nor any of my fellow Conservative students of le vice anglais, have ever worn a mask for anything, least of all a thorough paddling.”

Little changes in Conservative rumplands:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/perso...unity.html

“Nothing cheers up a dinner party like a discussion about le vice anglais - so much more tasteful than discussing one's overdraft or women bishops.”