The Pontrieux Report

Bryan Ferry has got into a bit of a kerfuffle over comments he made about Nazi iconography. Unfortunately he forgot the basic rules of the game, Left wing dicatorships romantic: Right wing dictatorships evil.

Instead of admiring the presentation of Nazi rallys and the work of Speer and Riefenstahl he should have spoken of the spectacle of Stalin’s parades, of the magnificent architecture of Boris Iofan and of the romanticism of socialist realism. No one would have batted an eyelid.

Watching Channel Four news  the other night I was taken on a very unpleasant trip down memory lane.

In the past ten years or so we have become complacent and taken for granted those things that we used to desire; like stable employment or at least the knowledge that if one job comes to an end we can easily find another; that next year our house will be worth more than it is this year.

No-one  seems too concerned that should they become unemployed they will have little chance of finding a new job;with record interest rates  finding themselves unable to pay the mortgage and finding that they have to sell. They don’t have to worry that there a many thousands of people in the same position as you and nobody wants to buy your house. They don’t have to worry that even if you do sell, it will be worth less than you paid and you still owe money to the mortgage company.

At this point younger viewers may remonstrate that I am being far-fetched and spouting a lot of nonsense. In fact only 14 years ago this was a sad reality for many thousands of people. A sprawling housing estate near Bristol called Bradley Stoke had the ignomany of being known as ‘Sadly Broke’ – the negative equity capital of the UK.

John Major’s Conservative government never recovered from their incompetence in handling the economy. To make matters worse the then Chancellor appeared to find the whole espisode quite amusing. He is famously reported to have “sung in his bath “when we forced out to the ERM, and when asked if he had any regrets when campaigning at the Newbury by election replied with a smug grin “Je ne regrette rien”. Hilarious.

Thankfully we hear little of these people afterwards and they retire to their many directorships and head up obscure organisations. It was in his capacity as Chairman of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce, that Lord Norman Lamont popped up on Channel Four News.

Did he have some words of criticism of Iran for the kidnapping and detention of our sailors? Not at all. The only person he criticised was our Prime Minister for seeking support from the United Nations.

Then I recalled that the last time we saw Lord Lamont gracing our TV screens was over the deportation of General Pinochet back to Chile. So that what was OK then, Lord Lamont can’t have been that bad if he was welcoming the news that the man charged with ordering the death or “disappearance” of 3,000 political opponents and the torture of 30,000 others, is being sent back to his country to face justice?

Were it to be true. In fact our hero was outraged that General Pinochet could no longer seek safe haven abroad.

From being the pariah Chancellor Lord Lamont has turned into the “pariah advocate of the despicable”. A modern day Lord Haw-Haw if you will. Germany Calling! Germany Calling!