Morning:
8°c
Earlier this year I rubbed St Tropez'd shoulders in Moscow with Polina Deripaska, the beautiful young wife of Oleg, the Russian billionaire whose yacht soirées have got first Peter Mandelson and now George Osborne into such trouble. Polina and I were both guests at the lavish party Roman Abramovich's girlfriend Dasha Zhukova threw at her new museum, the one where Amy Winehouse was paid £1 million to perform for 45 minutes.
For anyone with less than several billion in their current account, this intoxicatingly glamorous parallel universe merely feels a bit humiliating. For a politician, however, it's a moral and ethical minefield. So what did Osborne think he was doing?
This is a world of ruinously expensive champagne where the party never ends and everyone except you is dressed in couture. (I was wearing a three-quarter-length dress from the Ghost sale. I only just about got away with it. The venue was very poorly lit.) I got chatting to a woman who showed me pictures on her BlackBerry of where she had been in the past four days: India, New York, Monaco. She treated international airports in the way most of us treat Tube stops. What can you say to this? My usual cocktail party conversation "So are you following Strictly?" was of little use.
These circles are dizzying and terrifying and that's even before you've boarded the £80 million super-yacht. They are certainly no place for anyone who wants to convince an electorate of their deep desire to improve life for ordinary people. And they are an especially disastrous milieu for former Bullingdon Club members who would like to make out that they're "just like the rest of us".
Lord Mandelson's foray into Russian high society was perhaps unwise but not shocking: he has never made it a secret that he courts the rich. At a stretch you could argue that he was doing his bit for British-Russian relations. (OK, that's a massive stretch.) But at least Mandelson had the social grace to save himself from the worst faux pas you can be accused of when mingling with the wealthy: the over-riding temptation to blurt out something along the lines of: "Look, you've got plenty of money. Please could I have just a little bit of it?"
For Osborne, however, there is no such defence. At best he has been made to look foolish. And he has succeeded in doing something Labour spin doctors gave up trying to achieve years ago: he has made Peter Mandelson look good.
Between the two of them, they prove once and for all that politicians of every hue should go to great lengths to avoid the stench of privilege and corruption inevitably associated with hanging out in the billionaires' playground.
Meanwhile for the rest of us, these tales of floating vodka palaces are a timely lesson in being thankful for what we've got. Relative poverty suddenly seems an attractive prospect. No yachts to furnish, no private jets to book, no politicians expecting rivers of Krug. A simple, stress-free existence is something money can't buy. As I'm sure George Osborne must be thinking right now.
We're workers, not slackers
Why do people always assume that part-time workers are the slackers of the office world? The reverse is true. Part-timers and flexi-workers get the work done in the time allotted rather than faffing about on Facebook for hours on end. Patricia Hewitt is right to speak out against proposals to scrap the extension of flexible work. It's an ideal solution when times are tight. People get the hours they want and their employer can pay them a little less instead of making them redundant. Scaling back flexibility sends the message that you're only good to work if you do an expensive, long-hours, five-day week. Forget about being family-friendly (which this Government evidently already has), where is the business sense in this?
Mon dieu, this girl can sing
Is the Roundhouse in Camden the best live music venue in town? I saw Camille there on Sunday night and the atmosphere was extraordinary. Human beatbox, a cappella virtuoso, part woman, part wood sprite, Camille is France's million-selling answer to Björk. Her show was electrifying: no instruments, just a piano and her backing vocalists. Every note was pitch-perfect, every lyric crystal clear.
The acoustics didn't come into their own, though, until she suddenly invited Jamie Cullum onto the stage for some unscheduled jazz improv. Jamie might be big in France, but for an audience of middle-class London francophiles (pretentious, nous?), he was bad news. Before reluctant polite applause came a collective gasp of sheer horror.
Reader views (2)
Viv
re : Roundhouse,
Went to see The Stranglers there last year, the atmosphere, the smell, the acoustics, the whole experience...was fantastic. Made me feel 18 again (I'm 42).
- Peter Killick, Hartlepool, UK., 23/10/2008 23:41
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If our new 'Lord of the Flies' has been sniffing around for a 'sleeping partnership' in ventures like this, can Meddlesome's 'true' friend, and that fellow classy opportunist, Blair, too, be that far away from
'investing'?
Over the past four years of unmonitored 'entertaining', M'Lord Mandy must have been having one helluva ride.
And remember, Kinnock had eight years of this high-life.
Whilst in office, do politicians ever have to pay for anything?
- Dave, cumbria, 23/10/2008 14:44
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