We are increasingly regarded as antiquidated and can be often accused of hairissment It’s all verbage ain’t it? JOHN O’BYRNE Dublin

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Published: August 1, 2010

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We are increasingly regarded as “antiquidated” and can be often accused of “hairissment” It’s all “verbage”, ain’t it?

JOHN O’BYRNE
Dublin. TIME FOR another episode of the long-lost Shakespearian masterpiece, The History of King Tony or New Labour’s Lost, Love, in which brave King Tony seeks to drag Britain from the 19th century into the 21st, trying not to lose Wales and Scotland in the process. At the moment he is embroiled in a war against King Slobodan of Serbia… The scene is King Tony’s command centre, where he is taking counsel with his chief General.
Tony: Now, General, tell me straight: how goes thewar?General: Not good, not bad. It could be worse,I think.Tony: Mince not thy words with me but tell me nowIf we shall beat King Slobodan or no!General: Wouldst thou have a straight andhonest answer?You thought to knock some sense into the foe;Instead of that, you’ve angered him untilHis wrath has been directed on his folk,These poor inhabitants of Kosovo,Whose safety you did promise to the press.Your bombs have made a true and holy mess.Tony: Why did you never say this here before?General: I did, my Lord.

I warned you, straightand blunt,You would not hear me and you’ve paid for it.Well, not exactly you, but all those folkWho have been raped and killed and chasedFrom out their homes in far-off Kosovo -Tony: How dare you talk like this to your youngKing!Do you not know that all my British peopleStand right behind me in this mercy war!Enter Harold Pinter.Pinter: Not all! Oh, some of us will ne’er stand byAnd see this murderous bombing in our name!Tony: Why should I not indulge in this great fight?Pinter: I’ll tell you why not on Newsnight, latetonight,When I shall get my own five-minute slotTo say why I am right, and you are not!Tony: Who are you, tall dark stranger? What’s yourname?Pinter: My name is Pinter. Playwriting is my game.Tony: I should have known! You folk are all thesame,Like Sir Peter Hall, who ever and a day,Begs me to support his latest play,Whingeing and whining, asking for more cash…Good Lord, is that the time? I needs must dash!To Scotland I do go at this late hourTo give the Scottish back their long-lost power!The scene is a campaign room somewhere in Scotland. Three campaign workers, Janet, Donald and Dougal, are groaning over their task.Donald: Come voting day, the turn-out will be poor. I’ve been out knocking on many a voter’s doorAnd everyone, from castle to tiny tent,Says, Awa’ wi’ ye and wi’ your Parliament!Dougal: Would they rather stay back home, safein the warm?Donald: It isn’t that. It is the voting formWhich is so complex and so full of clauses,The very sight doth make them sick and nauseous.Janet: First tick your choice! Now tick theother box!Now fill in page three! And tick your second choice!Go back three spaces, now please start again!I’ve seen nothing like it since I don’t know when!Enter King Tony, in disguise.Tony: All hail, good party members, how d’you do?Donald: Good day.Janet: Good day.Dougal: Good day, and who are you?Tony: I come from London, ganging my way upnorth,To Edinburgh, on the bonny Firth of Forth.Donald: So that explains your curious speakingstyle.I’ve not heard speech like that for quite a while. Janet: From London, eh? With nail bombs goingoff,No wonder you have fled…Donald: …and mad King TonyWho condemns the bombers in Old Compton StreetAnd goes on bombing Slobodan himself!Dougal: How can he justify this moral stance?Janet: Come in, take off your coat and have a rest…Tony:[Pulling disguise tighter round himself]No, no, perhaps I won’t I think I will go on.The rain is growing lighter Here comes the sun.More of this soon, I hope.. MOHAMED AL FAYED won his battle for acceptance in one sense: he became part of the soap opera of British public life.

His attempt to obtain a British passport, which would probably have put him in the position of paying considerably more tax, had become one of the epic follies of our national life. He became part of the footballing strand of the national soap opera, by owning a club. He starred in the business strand, featuring a long- running feud against another larger-than-life tycoon, Tiny Rowland. He became part of the royal story through his late son, one of the less-often- remembered victims of the Paris car crash. And he became part of the political soap opera too, in a sub-plot more convoluted than The House of Cards, in which he bribed MPs and triggered the Tory sleaze explosion that contributed to the size of Labour’s landslide.
But fame – or notoriety – cannot be the basis on which citizenship is decided. The very concept of citizenship is made of rarefied, precious stuff, its form abstract and amorphous, its definition ambiguous.

It implies rights and duties, which are conferred willy-nilly on babies born in the right circumstances. But it is not unreasonable for states to set some kind of basic quality control over those who wish to be naturalised as adults. There may well be something quaint about the requirement that applicants for British citizenship be “of good character”, and the definition of the phrase invites bureaucratic discretion in which prejudices against races and religions could be given too much play. Mr Fayed suggests that “the establishment” is biased against him because he is a Muslim from Egypt.

But – in this case – there can be no doubt that Mr Fayed fails the test fairly and absolutely, and Jack Straw should be congratulated on risking his vengeance by following the law scrupulously.In future, it would be better to update the character test and make the disqualifying conditions explicit, in order to reduce the element of discretion to a minimum and eliminate any suggestion that rich Anglo-Saxons are able to buy a British passport. Mr Fayed would still find himself railing against the establishment from his terracotta palace in Knightsbridge, because the bribery, his tactics against business rivals and lying about where he got the money from to buy Harrods would be more than enough to disqualify him under any criteria. And those are just the things that we know about.It was noteworthy yesterday that Mr Fayed’s publicists responded to the reasons Mr Straw has given him for his decision without publishing the Home Secretary’s letter in full. If Mr Fayed is so convinced of the rightness of his case, then let him publish the whole letter, and answer the charges against him about which we have not yet been told.. IF YOU voted yesterday, your ballot paper can be traced.


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