Tag Archives: Westminster

Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope

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I’m steadily working my way through Trollope’s Pallisers, this being the fourth book in the series, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it all. In fact I’m having to make myself take a rest in between them and read something completely different (and less of a chunkster) otherwise it would be ages before I was ‘living’ outside 19th century Britain.

As you will realise from the title, Phineas Finn makes a comeback to Westminster via the constituency of Tankerville where he is eventually proclaimed as their MP after the vote was scrutinised and his opponent was found to have been bribing voters.

Although he doesn’t like the look of the place or its inhabitants he’s glad to be able to be part of the life of Westminster again, despite the fact that he is having to live off his savings as of course in those times MPs weren’t paid a wage, politics was really a rich man’s pastime. Phineas is hoping to gain a ministerial post as ministers were paid, but things don’t go well for him and he has such a quick temper and he takes offence so easily that it’s inevitable that he falls foul of enemies who are out to get him.

Well, that’s about as much as I’m going to say about the storyline, except to say that it did take a completely unexpected turn – for me anyway. I haven’t seen the Pallisers on TV so it’s all new to me.

In this book and the previous one there has been a lot written about Plantagenet Palliser, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, trying to get decimalisation of the currency through the House of Commons. This was a huge surprise to me when I first read it because decimalisation didn’t take place in the UK until 1971, when I was in primary 7. We were all given dummy sets of the new coins in plastic so that we would be used to them when they were minted. You can see what the old coins looked like here.

I was quite amazed to discover through Trollope that decimalisation was mooted as far back as Victorian times. I had a bit of a search and discovered it being spoken of in Hansard on 12th,June 1855. So it took over 100 years from then for the system to be changed to what is definitely a simpler way of calculating things but I must admit that I’m one of the generation who still thinks of prices in ‘real’ money, so I still find myself saying occasionally something like: Flip! That cauliflower is 30 bob in real money! In other words 30 shillings – or £1.50 in decimal coinage.

Planty Palliser or the Duke as I must now call him was exasperated as he didn’t know what to do about the farthings as five farthings wouldn’t fit into an old penny. That was no problem in 1971 because farthings had been abolished by then as being too worthless to bother about. A certain person sitting not too far from me now can remember being charged tuppence three farthings for something, it must have been sweeties surely. I bet shop workers were glad to be rid of them, it’s such a lot to have to say – for so little.

MPs’ corruption

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On Thursday 16 August 1660 Samuel Pepys wrote

“This morning my Lord (all things being ready) carried me by coach to Mr. Crew’s, (in the way talking how good he did hope my place would be to me, and in general speaking that it was not the salary of any place that did make a man rich, but the opportunity of getting money while he is in the place.)”

Samuel Pepys was being congratulated on getting a new job. I think it was in Naval procurement, and although the pay was not fantastic, there was ample scope for enrichment by way of back-handers and greasing of palms. According to his diary he took every chance he could to enhance his fortune.

It is quite depressing to think that even although we are 449 years beyond his times, we don’t seem to have been able to improve matters. There will always be people who are disgustingly greedy and they really just can’t help it. Unfortunately, the rest of us are guilty of being too trusting. I reckon that most of us have always known that there are plenty of MPs who are in it for what they can get out of it. However we liked to think that it was at the expense of companies who wanted to have them as directors and such like. I certainly didn’t think that anybody would be so blatant about it, as some of them have been.

I know that MPs say that being at Westminster is like being in a wonderful club, so it wont be long before they see themselves as being something above the rest of us. Instead of what they actually are, which is employees of the electorate. So, I can understand that it must be easy to get out of touch with the real world.

But plenty of them do manage to keep their integrity. If I were them, I would be apoplectic with rage at the performance of Speaker Michael Martin today. He lumped them all together proclaiming them all guilty as if that would make matters better. The tactics from day 1 have been to deflect any allegations away from the perpetrators by quickly apologising for a ‘mistake’ and then to quickly say that the really bad guys must be hunted down. I watched Tony McNulty in disbelief when he came out with such a response.

Watching Newsnight Scotland tonight, I discovered that if Michael Martin did resign as Speaker, he would have to forego a £100,000 golden handshake. Well, he isn’t likely to do that but surely if the man had any brains at all he would have announced that he was going to stand down before the next election.

His speech today was a disgrace. It was obvious that he hadn’t even written it as surely he wouldn’t have stumbled over the words so badly if they were his. I don’t think he had even looked at them prior to the speech.

I know that there have always been plenty of people opposed to him being the Speaker and others have always ridden to his defense. They claim that MPs of a certain type couldn’t stand it that he had the job. Well, I think that Michael Martin has had a very easy time of it because of those allegations of snobbery against anyone who dared to complain about him.

He has been an appalling Speaker and an absolute embarrassment. I was born in a tenement in the east end of Glasgow and over the years I’ve often been mortified by his behaviour. I hate to think that he might be seen as – one of our best – because honestly he couldn’t be much worse.