The scum rises to the top......

I started to read Peter Oborne’s piece in the DT about Hague’s revival of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, but by the time I got to the bit about dumping the F&CO library I was in such a fury that I had to stop before I burst something.

What an incredible act of mindless vandalism!

This contained all the treaties and key documents since Tudor times. As an historical treasure trove it was beyond price, a unique record that Harvard or Yale would kill for. How much more Labour crime is going to come out in future years? Plenty is now emerging after the fall off Gadaffi. ( Matt’s cartoon in the DT the other day was a corker showing G dashing across the desert in his jeep with the caption ‘I’ve been asked to appear in ‘Celebrity Big Brother!’).

I suspect all this was the work of the right-on Permanent Secretary at the F&CO, who got a peerage as a reward for his destructive term. Another smart move was to abolish the language school, as well as kicking out the precision of written and spoken English that was perfected there and substitute it with jargon and Birt-speak so that nobody outside can understand what the hell they are talking about.

And why has all this only just come out? Where were the historians from telly, the conservationists, the protectors of the national heritage and all the other self-appointed noise-makers who would be marching on Whitehall for less?

And now we have Ken Clarke, who seems to be getting increasingly dotty, seriously proposing that TV cameras should be allowed into trials. At this time the suggestion is televising the Judge’s summing up only (that should make for riveting viewing), but we all know how adept are our masters at the ‘thin end of the wedge’ treatment.

So are we to see trials turned into a version of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’; ‘I’m a villain; get me out of here’?

This government seems to match in incompetence what the last lot had in sheer wickedness.

I suppose it all goes to show that the scum always rises to the top.