The John Blunt column

GIVEN the deluge of horrific evidence of the failure of primary schools to teach children to read and write properly, the major drive to raise standards by forcing all school heads and their staff to retrain may be regarded as a necessary move.

Some 200 consultants are being appointed to carry out this literacy training and goodness knows what the bill for that will be.

But if you are a government minister, there's a 22 per cent increase - worth £20,000 extra - in the pipeline next year. Of course, it ill-behoves a government to oversee such a public sector pay squeeze while displaying no such restraint itself.

But if Tony Blair and his senior colleagues do not reject their handsome increase out of regard for the moderation they are imposing on five million others, then let us, please, have no more outraged cant from the government benches whenever the so-called "fat cat" industrialists stick their snouts deep into the pay trough.

Watchdogs need to bare their teeth

THE Broadcasting Standards Council is, I see, concerned about the level of violence on TV - and that too much is served up before the 9 pm watershed by when children are deemed to be in bed.

Of course, sensible parents can always turn the telly off. But if the kiddies' sensibilities are the BSC's concern - though they have so far not prevented them being exposed to such stuff as incest, rape, adultery in the early-evening soaps - should they not also have a regard for those of the grown-ups watching the telly after nine o' clock? Yet, if common decency forms, as I would expect, any part of the "standards" which the BSC is supposed to monitor, I can only assume its members must fall asleep in front of the box at the kids' bedtime.

For how else can one explain such a dollop of filth as the BBC's new drama, The Lakes passing any TV watchdog's definition of decent entertainment?

True, the publicity material for the four-part series, which began last Sunday, did not disappoint as a guide to the plot. "There are only two things you can do in a little village in the Lake District," it said. "One is drink, the other sex." .

But, heaven's sakes, the first hour-and-a-half episode was devoted to virtually nothing else and mainly graphic sex scenes at that. This was more pornography than a play.

Time was when anyone showing one tenth of the stuff served up last Sunday would have been in the dock on obscenity charges. But is not the real obscenity the fact that nowadays no watchdog has the nerve to put the muck merchants running our TV companies there while, all around, there is hand-wringing about the depths to which the country's morals have descended?

Such a silly Willie

NICE work, of course, if you can get it. But if I were a Tory, I would be in no way envious of former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke landing a plum £120,000-a-year boardroom job.

Rather, I would be glad that such a clever and experienced politician is to devote only two days a week to earning this bit of beer money.

For that clearly signals that he thinks there is another, more important job to be done by him - that of leading the Tory Party. Yes, I know that Mr Clarke is on the Tory back benches out of choice. Nonetheless, what an evident waste of talent it is, when one examines the performance so far of the pipsqueak William Hague whom a majority of Tory MPs who survived the May 1 holocaust stupidly preferred as leader instead of Big Ken.

For if they were bent on picking a boy to do a man's job, they could hardly have done better.

Or worse, if their party's long haul back from the wilderness is the concern. It is not just that Little Willie has the irritating manner - and voice - of a know-all with no real savvy, but he has fast displayed the traits of an out-of-his-depth blunderer.

Just look at his own goal this week over Tony Blair's fixing it so that Diana had the sort of funeral the country wanted. He milked the situation so the government would get the credit, Willie snipes.

What a chump - giving the government another bite of the cherry by reminding everyone of just how on-the-ball the Prime Minister was.

And this just after the decimated Tory Party was given yet another bloody nose in Scotland with the devolution vote being translated into another instance of how in tune Labour is with the people. How on earth is he going to pass off tomorrow's drubbing in the Welsh referendum as something other than yet another sorry day for the Tories?

Mr Hague, however, seems to think that in-tuneness with the people can be achieved by wearing a baseball cap and appearing at the Notting Hill Carnival wearing a whistle and a grin.

But such shallowness, surely, must soon be exposed.

If we fast forward to the coming Conservative Party conference at Blackpool, I predict that there will be as much attention given by the media and Tory grassroots to what Kenneth Clarke says or does not say as to anything William Hague does or says.

Mr Clarke, as is already evident, is waiting his time. And Willie's weary form so far suggests that he may not have to wait long.

The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.