Britain's Dark Heart

Arthur Scargill has not said a word this week. He must have been asked, and we would certainly have been told. Other people have danced in the streets, or shot their mouths off on the telly, sometimes both. But not him. He does deserve some credit for that.

As for that record, Radio One say that it will only be played if it has to be, because it is Number One or the highest climber, and how hearing that term again takes one back. But I remember when Radio One would not play Number One records by Robson and Jerome purely because they were, so to speak, Number Two. 

The Beeb will also be covering the equally Third World "Ceremonial Funeral", a concept invented for Diana. The only other one since has been for the Queen Mother. For whom they would otherwise have had to have invented something anyway, but it did not turn out that way. However, we do not have "Ceremonial Funerals" for politicians. Nor do we dance in the streets when they die. This is not somewhere up the Congo. This is Britain.

And "full military honours" for a mere politician who had no connection to the Forces? (The Irish Guards carried the Queen Mother's coffin because she was their Colonel.) It is like Thatcher's hijacking of the Falklands Victory Parade, when she stole the proper role of a Commander-in-Chief whose own son has been one of the combatants. Perhaps that was the point at which we became Mobutu's Zaire? We are undeniably Mobutu's Zaire now.