OXFORD students voting to remove a portrait of the Queen from their common room is a small pebble in a small pond. Or it would be in a sensible country with sensible newspapers.

For the Daily Mail, this rearrangement earns the headline: “OUTRAGE AS OXFORD STUDENTS VOTE TO AXE QUEEN.” Over on the Daily Express, milky morning tea is being dribbled out to the words: “HOW DARE THEY! OXFORD STUDENTS CANCEL OUR QUEEN.”

This is a story for the Oxford Mail, not the Daily Mail. And that is where you will find it , seemingly followed up from the nationals, as the local story was uploaded only this morning.

The Oxford Mail website does, however, opt for a sensible headline: “Oxford University students vote to remove portrait of Queen.” No faux outrage, no sticking your head in a dustbin and shouting for effect; just the facts in a story written by one reporter.

The better-known Mail dedicated three reporters on the task, according to the joint byline. Three people to write that nonsense! Plus at least one news editor shouting into that dustbin, one editor steering from the sidelines, and one sub-editor to bellow at his computer while composing that headline.

What a lot of effort for nothing much. The Mail’s headline is, naturally enough, misleading as the students haven’t voted to “axe the Queen” but to remove her portrait from their common room.

Still, in the heat of the moment it’s hard to tell the difference between a portrait and a real monarch. Had they just voted to abolish the monarchy, the headline might have made sense.

As for the Express, dearie me, it’s like an old auntie who spits out her false teeth at the slightest provocation. Put your teeth back in – those students just want to remove a picture.

Sadly, this non-story fits with the culture wars mood of the moment, as the students decreed that the picture “represents colonial history”.

You know, students are always protesting about something or other and always have. Although in my long distant days at Goldsmiths College, the student politics passed me by, as I was more interested in beer, girls and English literature, approximately in that order.

What strikes me as an outrage is that our newspapers should be so easily outraged by nothing at all. Still, at least being outraged on behalf of the Queen avoids the need to do the heavy lifting involved in finding a real story or a real outrage.

The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, got in on the act. Of course he did, popping up and down like the over-filled kettle of pointless indignation that he is. He tweeted that “students removing a picture of the Queen is simply absurd. She is the Head of State and a symbol of what is best about the UK. During her long reign she has worked tirelessly to promote British values of tolerance, inclusivity & respect around the world.”

Nearly 4,500 people liked that lame tweet – how anyone can like a tweet from that man is a mystery.

He could open the doors to his own cellar, peer down those steps and wonder if he’d be better trying to understand his job, rather than sending out twerpy tweet-tweets.

It’s dispiriting when newspapers carry on like this. Isn’t there any proper news out there any more? As someone who has been foolish enough to spend most of his working life in and around newspapers, sometimes I despair.

Oddly, though, I can’t shake off the habit of believing in newspapers, even when they churn out this stuff. Or believing in some newspapers some of the time, mostly the Guardian and the Observer as that’s just the way I am. And the Yorkshire Post as the features editor is kind enough to use my words sometimes.

But all those national editors getting hot under their collars should give over worrying about student politics.  They should have canned that habit when they stopped being students.

IT’S a flag-shaped irony. Those right-wing politicians who drape themselves in the union flag risk putting some of us off the country altogether. Here are a few reasons not to feel so patriotic – apologies for anything missing, as the list is getting longer by the day.

Cutting foreign aid…

For a wealthy country to break its promise to much poorer parts of the world, and potentially to expose hundreds of thousands of children to suffering and even death, is just so shameful that you wonder what Boris Johnson can be thinking of. The answer to that question, sadly, is that he is playing to the gallery at home, and is happy to cause suffering abroad as a sop to narrow-minded voters. Last November, a YouGov survey found that two-thirds of voters approved of Johnson’s £5bn cut in foreign aid – even though this rode roughshod over his own manifesto. Many leading Tories are aghast at this cruel proposal and yesterday attempted to hold a vote in the Commons, only to be denied by the Speaker. As well as having a grave human cost, this cut is short-sighted and risks weakening our soft power, while leaving other countries to move in.

Raving on about asylum seekers…

Placing asylum seekers in a rotten old military barracks in Kent, where the conditions are said to be appalling, was last week ruled to be unlawful by the high court. Will that make any difference? Probably not. After all, home secretary Priti Patel was decreed to have broken the ministerial code by swearing and shouting at civil servants, and Boris Johnson ignored the ruling, leaving his ethics adviser, Sir Alex Allan, with no choice but to resign. Incidentally, can you imagine having to advise that man on ethics? Nearly as tough a gig as being his adviser on birth control. Or his truth-telling tsar. As for the Napier barracks, where asylum seekers are treated like prisoners, that is a disgraceful way for a civilised country to conduct its affairs. Perhaps we no longer wish to be civilised. Still, raving on about asylum seekers creates another useful distraction.

Brexit being a bit of a balls-up…

Thanks to the pandemic, an overly obliging media and a cowed BBC, you don’t hear much about the continued pain being inflicted by Brexit. According to an interview Johnson has just given, he has nothing to add, saying “that lemon has been sucked dry”. Bizarre, but as sucking lemons is not generally considered to be enjoyable, perhaps his choice of metaphor hints at an underlying truth about Brexit. Here is one small example of the sour pointlessness of it all, as reported by the Guardian at the weekend. Tough new entry requirements could cut by a half the number of visits by young Europeans. How mad is that? Here is one family example. My dad, now aged 89, visited France on an exchange as a boy and this left him with a life-long love of the country. Are we wanting young Europeans to grow up with a life-long suspicion of the UK?

Offering up our medical data…

Why is the government so eager to pass on our medical data to the likes of Google and medical corporations – and why is this seemly happening on the sly, with a few weeks’ notice and no official way to opt out? Having declared myself suspicious of this initiative, I have downloaded a letter to send to my GP asking for this not to happen. Whether that will make a difference is hard to say, but it seems like a sensible move.

Tory MPs huffing as footballers take the knee…

Football in this country – and it’s not often you’ll see a sentence starting with those words round here – is multiracial and many leading players are Black. So it is hardly surprising that England players should take the knee before a match, even if this does leave a few idiot fans to start booing. Hardly surprising, either, sadly, that some Tory MPs should join in the booing, and in the process make themselves look stupid. Yes, Brendan Clarke-Smith, we are looking at you. The MP for Little-Brainshire – or somewhere – compared the anti-racism gesture to footballers performing the Nazi salute during a 1938 match against Germany. As actor David Schneider pointed out on Twitter: “Nazi salute = support for racism and genocide Taking the knee = opposition to racism and racial injustice.”

Further additions to this list are welcome. Well, they’re not, but you are welcome to make them.

HERE are a few unexceptional experiences that seem marvellous…

Walking with a group of friends on the North York Moors. Going to the cinema to see Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland (great film, depressing too, but shot through with human spirit). Cycling to the university to play squash again. Meeting pals for beer and then a curry. All these activities used to happen and now they’ve taken place again. Does that mean we are back to normal as June 21 approaches? Who knows, but it’s a start, although let’s can the ‘Freedom Day’ label for just being too annoying. Still, all of the above activities were enjoyable, even losing at squash.

My beef about beef…

I SEE that the government is getting excited about striking a trade deal with Australia to import beef. This arrangement could see zero tariffs on such imported meat, which would harm our own farmers and lower health and welfare standards. The RSPCA is against such a deal; British farmers are against such a deal; anyone with sense in their head should be against such a deal. Our Brexity government is dead set on striking a hurried deal so that it can win bragging rights, if little else. Anyone in such a hurry to win a deal is unlikely to secure a good deal, I’d suggest. Also, as this is a self-proclaimed ‘green’ government, if you believe such statements, how does importing beef from the other side of the world make economic or environmental sense? It doesn’t, it makes upside-down Brexit sense. And Brexit always was the cult that dismissed good sense. If the deal goes ahead, this carnivore will make sure only to buy British beef. And here ends my beef about beef.

Photo PA

Horizontal history…

THE statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston has been put on show in an exhibition that will help decide what should happen to the bronze memorial. It was toppled and dumped in the docks as part of the Black Lives Matter protests a year ago. The statue, with the protesters’ spray paint preserved, is being displayed alongside placards from the protest. All this seems sensible, unless you are the man from the Daily Telegraph, who says that presenting the statue horizontally is a partisan act. Not really, it’s an accurate representation of what happened and sets the statue in its new context. Colston was honoured by Victorian businessmen who wished to glory in his achievements, while overlooking the cruelty of slavery. What happened to the Colston statue is also now part of history, and if the statue were restored to its old condition and position, that would be to overlook history. That’s the trouble with history. The past doesn’t stay still, but changes in accordance with how you look at it. There isn’t one version of history, and choosing how to remember our past is not a simple matter of saying, “Oh weren’t we great.” Sometimes we were and sometimes we were not.

IT HAS been brought to the attention of the management that too many of these blogs are about a certain prime minister of our unfortunate acquaintance.

In the spirit of that accusation, here is a catch-up about the man we are not going to mention.

That secret wedding wasn’t very secret, was it?

The clandestine ceremony took place last Saturday after visitors were turfed out of Westminster Cathedral. That might have spoilt their day out, but it didn’t spoil the secret.

Anyway, soon enough the secret was out and everywhere, almost as if in a PR campaign where timing is everything. There followed maximum exposure of the man we are not going to mention and his new third wife. A bit like when they got that dog, only more so.

Perhaps the wedding was to draw attention away from that former co-conspirator turned adversary who’d been generating unflattering headlines a day or so earlier.

That’ll show him – we’re getting married in the morning.

Perhaps the wedding was kept secret so that nobody would notice that the groom was as far from being a practising Catholic as the Vatican is from London.

There was much lively comment on Twitter about the wedding photos. Rotten people pointed out that the man we are not going to mention looked more like the father of the bride. Rotten people can be so mean, can’t they? And yet so right at the same time.

Before we hurry on from those political nuptials, there has been much grumbling about the third wife being referred to in overnight headlines as ‘Flotus’, as if she were married to an American president.

We don’t have the equivalent of the First Lady of the United States here. If we did the acronym would be ‘Flotuk’. I am sure we can all second the proposal that first ladies should stay on the other side of the Atlantic.

Also conveniently overshadowed by the secret wedding was the row over who paid that massive bill for decorating the Downing Street flat.

The man we are not going to mention appointed another man to see if any rules had been broken. This other man found that they hadn’t. You could have knocked me down with a roll of expensive wallpaper when I heard that.

Quelle surprise, as the French used to say when they were still talking to us. Favoured man appointed to investigate sticky matter encounters nothing sticky.

Although he did point out that the man we are not going to mention should pay closer attention to where money comes from. And he ruled that the man we are not going to mention ‘acted unwisely’ by basically having no idea who was going to pay for the refurbishment of the flat.

One minute the man we are not going to mention faced a massive decorating bill; the next it had been settled, no questions asked, or at least not until later.

Also in the news, someone or other reportedly has settled a £27,000 bill for organic food deliveries consumed by the unmentioned man and his ‘Flotuk’.

Whenever the man we are not going to mention encounters a money problem, a kind friend or supporter pops up to deal with the bill; or to pay for a much-needed exotic holiday.

I begin to wonder if this is what’s meant by ‘levelling up’. From now one, when struggling people up and down the land have a money problem, it will be settled by a mysterious benefactor, no questions asked, just pick up the bag of used notes behind the bins.

The man we are not going to mention used to write right-wing columns in which he, for instance, flayed feckless single mothers. Perhaps they should lay off being feckless and check behind the bins, just in case.

After all, it would be a terrible shame if fairy god parents only visited the wealthy and privileged. That really wouldn’t be level at all.

SEVEN hours is a long time for Dominic Cummings to have given evidence to MPs, and it’s hard to remember such a savaging for a sitting prime minister from a recently exiled ally.

Your takeaway from yesterday is likely to depend on what you thought beforehand.

If you dislike this government and its underhand ways, you will still dislike this government and its underhand ways, only with more evidence for your convictions.

If you like this government, and a surprising number of people seem to, you will say it’s all about revenge and anyway it’s a Westminster bubble about nothing much.

If you are generally anti, you will have to swallow the boiled fact that former Downing Street adviser Cummings, once seen by your side as the devil in a baseball cap, is now the man handing out the ammunition. If he was awful back then, is he acceptable now?

Everyone will have an opinion about this, or maybe their opinion will be that it’s not worth having an opinion.

Instead of joining that noisy crowd, here is another aspect to this: it’s all about the source.

When giving journalism lectures, I like to include a session on where news comes from. This sometimes comes with a dad-joke explanation of the difference between sources and sauces.

This came back to me this morning when skimming through what the papers had to say/spit about Cummings.

The man himself said something telling about sources. This was as follows: “The main person really though that I spoke to in the whole of 2020 was Laura Kuenssberg at the BBC, because the BBC has a special position in the country obviously during a crisis and because I was in the room for certain crucial things I could give guidance to her on certain very big stories.”

The social media haters will take this as proof that Kuenssberg is a witch in a pointy Tory hat. Such attacks misunderstand the nature of her job. She is basically a political reporter operating under the prevailing circumstances, where quoting anonymous government sources is the stuff of everyday political reporting.

Those unnamed ministers and sources are spilled all over this morning’s papers, as shown by the BBC website paper review.

In the Daily Telegraph, an unnamed adviser to a cabinet minister tells the paper Cummings was “quite selective on what he remembered”.

Over in The Times,  an unnamed cabinet minister – the same one; who knows? – tells the Times that Mr Cummings was after “vengeance”.

Also in The Times, there are quotes from several government sources, all questioning Mr Cummings’ credibility. One anonymous hit-person said the accusations were a “character assassination” that was “not backed by evidence”. Another says this was “revenge porn”.

Whoever said what, those anonymous cabinet sources are worrying – as too was Cummings when he was anonymously tipping off Kuenssberg.

Granting anonymity to sources for stories should be limited to those who need protection. Whistleblowers who could be putting themselves at risk by speaking out about something important need protection. This does not apply to cabinet sharks who remain nameless for their own Machiavellian purposes, while also leaving us uncertain about who is biting whom.

It’s always entirely possible that an anonymous source is made up – or is the prime minister himself. We just don’t know and that’s wrong. They should all be named.

At least The Guardian, the Daily Mirror and the i newspaper all picked the same directly attributed Cummings quote for their headline – “tens of thousands of people died, who didn’t need to die”.

Below you will see a different take from the Daily Express. It’s perfectly mad but I’ll just leave it here, as if dropped from a faraway planet. Which is a way it was…

THE six cardboard boxes lined up in the hall are gone, and along with them this job. Now it’s the following day and we’re all meeting to say hello and goodbye.

The jokes have been running for a while, about how we’ll come face to face and find ourselves saying, “You’re on mute”. Or about how we’ll be amazed to discover we all have bodies, not just faces flattened on a Chromebook screen.

One day one of us said “I’m six-foot-four” and the rest of us hadn’t guessed; hadn’t stopped to wonder who is tall and who is small; or who lands perfectly in between (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

As census engagement managers, we’ve been working across the north east, an area that the Office for National Statistics deems to run from Hull to Selby and then all the way up to Northumberland.

Before this we’ve all done different jobs and we’ll be doing different jobs again.

York is where we’re saying hello and goodbye. As this suits me indecently well, I’ve arranged the venues.

First of all we are in the Maltings, which is near the station and easy to find. Two of the group are present when I arrive, and the others follow gradually, until everyone is here, knocking elbows before sitting at two tables to comply with the eased restrictions.

Real beer in a real pub, a mundane marvel nowadays, and that Turning Point beer was lovely (two pints down already, a lot for a beery lightweight).

Ninety minutes or so later, we brave the rain for another venue. The Judge’s Lodging may be grand but it looks dismal today, especially those dripped-on tables out front, barely covered by umbrellas.

“It’s all right, you’re not here,” says the young woman at the outdoor reception desk.

We are led through the building to a row of posh huts at the back, each heated and nicely lit. Again, it’s six-plus-six as those are the rules, but that’s fine and we chat and eat and drink, some of us more than is usually the case on a Friday afternoon (another pint down).

At one point I ask if anyone is ready for my walking tour of York, as the latest downpour clatters away, scattering cats and dogs.

But never mind the rain. It’s a lovely occasion and it turns out that you can get to know people you’ve never met before. Meeting only online may be frustrating, but it’s possible to reach out across that divide after all those digital coffee breaks.

Somewhere along the way, the human touch seeps through. There are in jokes and work moans, along with a sense that we’ve done a good job, and never mind the frustrations (or the spreadsheets, oh God the spreadsheets; I’d never spread a sheet before and don’t particularly wish to again).

After three hours, some of us leave and some of us step smartly across the wet road to the House of The Trembling Madness (another pint, then a shandy).

Eventually we are four, then I want to leave as more beer would be unwise. Outside on the pavement, bumped elbows give way to parting hugs, and the rain gives way to that peculiar climactic condition known as not-rain, barely seen this month.

It was a great leaving do and everyone seemed like their on-screen selves, only better, more rounded and less digital. Perhaps we’ll keep in touch, as there’s a WhatsApp group.

Being a manager for Census 2021 was the first job I’d done with no connection to journalism – all the way back to the lost horizon of 1979. I was relieved to discover I could do a different job, but if anyone wants me back as a writer, editor or occasional journalism lecturer, now’s your chance.

Or maybe even something different. After all, I know how to engage now.

CAN you imagine any other media organisation indulging in such woeful self-flagellation as the BBC?

Lord Dyson’s report into how Martin Bashir used deceit to secure an interview with the Princess of Wales in 1995 was ordered by the BBC board shortly after Tim Davie became director general.

A mistrustful person might almost wonder if Davie were an undercover agent, an anti-BBC mole brought in to undermine the organisation from within.

Lord Dyson’s findings do not flatter the BBC, but the coverage has resulted in a weird bout of corporate poking-yourself-in-the-eye-with-a-stick. The BBC’s media editor, Amol Ragan, seemed indecently eager to explain how terrible this was for the BBC in a breathless bout of wounding observations.

The self-harming was so intense, and so much in the mould of the BBC Talking About The BBC, that I turned off. This happens more than used to be the case. It’s down to the intense repetition of the news agenda, with every outlet shouting from the same hymn book (Brexit, Covid, endless stories about the Royal Family).

There are reasons to be suspicious about why this report was ordered and who benefits, as well as leaving a moment to wonder why we can’t stop going on about something that happened fully 25 years ago.

The royal family is surely content to see blame for Diana’s death palmed off onto the BBC and one of its reporters. That way a seething mound of uncomfortable truths about how the royals treated Diana, and about how Prince Charles treated her, might be overlooked.

This scandal also offers the BBC’s enemies a perfect opportunity to demand that it be changed or abolished, or at the very least bashed into unquestioning meekness.

Boris Johnson, no stranger himself to a cheating tongue, would be very happy to see unfavourable coverage stifled on the BBC (spoiler alert: it’s possible this has already happened).

While we are kicking that stone down the road, the latest Private Eye has a telling snippet about Robbie Gibb, the former Tory spin doctor who once said he hated the “woke wetness” of the BBC, where he has just been appointed to the corporate board.

According to the Eye, Gibb spoke to journalism students at City University a year ago, telling them that “99 times out of a hundred, the things you hear from ministers are truthful”, and that journalists should stop thinking they are cleverer that the people they are interviewing.

Bizarrely, Gibb also told the students that the Daily Mail and the Daily Express were more truthful than other newspapers – a statement so wrong it might as well be a statue.

As for the general hypocrisy, that hangs heavier than the outrageously expensive wallpaper Boris Johnson had pasted up on the Downing Street walls.

If hypocrisy has a sound, it is tabloid mouthpieces tut-tutting about the morals of the BBC.

The Daily Express, these days not much a newspaper as a government press release in flimsy disguise, said that “pressure grows to reform the BBC”.

That from the newspaper that has done more than any other to flog to death old stories about Diana, including such dubious delights as “Princess Diana was murdered…” from April 2017.

No, she died with her boyfriend in a car crash in Paris, leaving her young sons at home – something that isn’t always remembered.

For newspapers that have spent decades living off the ghost of Diana to criticise the Martin Bashir interview is like one raving hyena telling another to get better manners.

Prince William believes that Bashir’s deceit influenced what his mother had to say, and may have led to her death two years later. While such a comment is understandable from a grieving son, it’s hard to stand up. Diana was desperate to talk about her marriage and her feelings; if not Bashir it would have been someone else.

And to conclude with another dollop of that rank hypocrisy, the nastiest jelly on a plate you ever did see, we’re nearly all guilty of that. Anyone who’s read all the endless words about Diana is as guilty as those who wrote them. Anyone who gawped at that Panorama interview and lapped it all up, is as guilty as the reporter using low trickery to secure the interview.

One day we will all have to stop feasting off that tragedy.

Culture wars secretary Oliver Dowden is very keen on delivering sermons about what he’s not going to put up with. He was doing this again yesterday in the church of the Sunday Telegraph.

Dowden has been not putting up with a lot lately, and mostly he’s been not putting up with people pulling down statues, even though hardly anybody does.

For his latest discourse, and I swear this must be one of those repeats people are always complaining about, Dowden was once again not putting up with allowing “Britain’s history to be cancelled”.

You hear this a lot at the moment and, frankly, it’s a puzzle. No one wishes to cancel history and anyway, you can’t. It’s there, it happened, it’s been and gone. 1066 and all that? Oh, no – we’ve cancelled that. It’s not there anymore, doesn’t exist.

When Dowden says he won’t put up with people cancelling history, what he means is that he won’t put up with people who think differently than himself or the government about how to present the many shades and shapes cast by our history. Unless you agree with him, your ideas are not wanted around here.

In his sermon, Dowden also said we should “stand up to the political fads and noisy movements of the moment”.

Well, yes. Especially if it’s that political fad and noisy movement of the moment about pretending that history is being torn up by leftie woke elves. If that’s your fad, Dowden’s your man.

Anyway, the culture wars secretary has gathered together a new Heritage Advisory Board to discuss all this, and don’t be surprised if any board member who dares to disagree suddenly falls through a chute in the floor.

In an aside, his latest sermon contained a passage about how voters in Red Wall seats will replace “people from metropolitan bubbles” on the boards of British museums. This was designed purely to generate headlines and/or a reaction, so we shall step over that trap while whistling something from the opera; or Van Morrison.

We won’t, however, let this next one pass without comment.

In bragging mode, Dowden sang his own praises in relation to the £2billion Cultural Recovery Fund.

Fair enough, up to a point. Yes, this money is a vital raft for the arts and heritage, even if that’s just what governments should do in such a crisis. It’s simply their job. Yet Dowden can’t resist saying that “this offers further proof that it is the Conservatives who are the party of culture”.

Oh, come off it. It’s rich for any single party to claim that title, especially the Tories. Years of austerity tore into the arts, and many other aspects of life.

Anyway, perhaps Dowden should have a word with education secretary Gavin Williamson, who at this very minute is proposing to cut the funding of arts subjects at universities from £36m to £19m (see past rants…)

An allegedly culture-loving culture wars secretary shouldn’t have to put up with such behaviour from a member of his own party.

Culture wars are this government’s favourite hobby. They cause distraction, they stop people talking about other things, and they dupe pissed-off bloggers into joining the argument instead of staying sensibly away.

These invented battles are barstool banter elevated to government policy. I realise that Sir Keir Starmer has a lot on his plate, but he really needs to work out how Labour can defuse these silly culture wars.

Big hint to Keir – don’t just join in, but oppose and ridicule, and expose this culture war for the cynical conjuring trick it surely is.

As for Oliver Dowden, we really shouldn’t have to put up with him.

NOW seems a good time to catch up with David Cameron. We go back a bit, Dave and me, as the framed newspaper on the study wall suggests.

This is a mocked-up front page of my old paper, presented six years ago on my departure. Such pages are a journalistic tradition and usually contain in-jokes. A strap along the bottom of mine suggests turning inside for “Julian’s David Cameron tribute column…”

You see, I had a weakness then for boring on about appalling Tory prime ministers (some habits never change).

After he left Downing Street while whistling, having brought Brexit crashing around our heads, the never less than impressively smug Cameron composed an account of his time in power. He was paid a reported £800,000 in a deal with HarperCollins to write For The Record. Mostly what people remember is that he spent a chunk of his generous advance on a shepherd’s hut in which to explain away his actions and say how jolly well he’d done.

I’ve not read For The Record but do cherish a photograph showing an unsold pile with a manager’s special offer ticket – reduced from £25 to £3.

Skimming over the reviews just now, here is Cameron on the Brexit vote – “My regrets about what had happened went deep. I knew then that they would never leave me. And they never have.”

Well, matey you were responsible for that shitshow, breezily assuming you’d win the vote and land one on Nigel Farage.

Call Me Dave will also be remembered as the prime minister who said he’d end the “who you know” lobbying culture – only to find himself in a lobbying scandal of his own contrivance, and all because of who he knew.

Fate can be unkind; then again sometimes fate kisses sweet.

Yesterday, Cameron was hauled before a committee of MPs to explain why he sent so many pleading emails and WhatsApp messages to ministers on behalf of the controversial bank he worked for – a bank that went bust, without the state aid Cameron was seeking.

The reviews from MPs were not glowing. He was told he’d “demeaned” the position of prime minister by lobbying on behalf of Greensill Capital and that his behaviour had left his “reputation in tatters”.

Call Me Tatters was forced to deny his lobbying was driven by fears that an “opportunity to make a large amount of money was at risk”. He refused to say how much he stood to make from the bank, but told MPs he was paid “a generous amount, far more than I earned as prime minister”.

He also claimed he’d not done this for himself, but for the economy; otherwise know as the economy of me, perhaps.

This sweaty Zoom appearance offered other unflattering insights into a world of easy wealth piled upon easy wealth, of failure grandly rewarded. The one that sticks in the mind – and craw – is Cameron admitting he’d used the failed billionaire financier’s private jet to fly to Cornwall to visit his “third” holiday home.

He was hazy about how many times that happened, saying he did not have a “complete record”. Seeing as we’re drawing parallels here, I can tell you precisely how many times a billionaire’s private yet has whisked me off to Cornwall.

It’s foolish to envy other people’s wealth, but just how much money does David Cameron need? He was wealthy anyway, earned a good salary as prime minister, was paid a packet to write a book nobody much read, and still wants more.

So there he was yesterday, all sweaty and defensive, and exposed as needy too, an overprivileged man who went all the way from lobbying for the TV company Carlton to lobbying for a failed banker, with a spell as prime minister in between.

Still, we must all do what we can. While Cameron was earning a fortune for that book, I’ve eked out a freelance living, written books yet to be published, worked for two universities and the Press Association, then lost those jobs, and spent eight months working as a census engagement manager.

That census role disengages next week, then it’s back to whatever in a long stagger towards the finish line of retirement.

Still, at least I did get to write that David Cameron tribute column.

IMAGINE being the Queen and having to read out whatever Boris Johnson just scribbled on the back of a fag packet.

Her Very Patient Majesty had to recite some tatty words yesterday. Her ventriloquism act reminds us that we are governed by right-wing columnists who heard something from a friend who heard it from a pal who likes a drink.

Two important bills might almost be based on gin or Bordeaux-fuelled urban myths.

One is the proposal for voters to have photo IDs. Here is a view from a perhaps surprising source (Tory MP speaks sense alert!) –

‘It’s illiberal. It’s an illiberal solution in pursuit of a non-existent problem. If you’ve got an ID card, you’re putting a barrier in the way of people to exercise their own democratic rights, which is not necessary and shouldn’t be there’.

It’s unsettling to find yourself nodding along to David Davis, but he has a point.

There is no noticeable problem with voting fraud and no honest reason for such a plan. But there is a dishonest one and it comes from the Trumpian playbook.

This plan could, according to this morning’s Guardian and others, risk freezing out two million voters – many at society’s margins who are unlikely to vote Tory. This is self-serving and a nasty piece of work; and should you wish to borrow those words to describe a prominent political personage, feel free.

Incidentally, in a TV encounter Health Secretary Matt Hancock was told by a reporter that there had been only six cases of voter fraud. Gathering up his full pomp, he replied that was “six too many” – much in the way that one Matt Hancock is one too many.

Later on Channel 4 News, Hancock bristled at being asked about the lack of social care plans in the speech. As Gary Gibbon pushed on this, Hancock tried to remain his usual smarmy self while the muscles in his neck tightened at the indignity of having to answer such questions.

Favourite Tory urban myth number two… our universities are rammed full of intolerant students who silence anyone remotely right wing – hence today’s headline in The Times, “New laws to protect university free speech.”

Thanks to Phil Batty from Times Higher Education for pointing out on Twitter that the latest Office for Students figures “for the university sector in England show that of 59,574 events organised with an external speaker, 53 were not approved. Yes, that’s 0.09% of events”.

A big hammer for a pimple-sized problem.

Still, this protecting free speech lark isn’t half complicated. As Education Secretary Gavin Williamson hauls his proposal up by the scruff of its pinstriped neck, Culture Wars Secretary Oliver Dowden continues his attempt to purge museums of anyone who disagrees with the government (see past Ledges).

The latest distinguished exile is the science author Sarah Dry, who withdrew her application to be reappointed as a trustee of the Science Museum Group after, according to the Observer, being told “to back the government’s policy against the removal of contentious historical objects”.

She declined, saying that “only by remaining free of government interference can our museums continue to earn the trust of the public”.

So to recap: free speech is the freedom of right-wing people to speak at universities without being interrupted (which generally they can do anyway); while free speech isn’t the freedom of people who run museums to say that they might disagree with the government.

Telling footnote: Gavin Williamson wants to ‘protect freedom of speech’ at universities at the same time that he wants to slash the freedom to study on arts courses. Spending on non-science subjects is due to be slashed from £36m to £19m, with more cuts promised.

This proposal wears culture war armour. The tinpot explanation is that this will “target taxpayers’ money towards the subjects which support the skills this country needs to build back better”.

In case the former fireplace salesman of the year has forgotten, the creative industries earn a fortune for this country, adding £115bn to the UK economy in 2019.

And why do we have to back one side rather than the other? A country without culture would be poorer in so many ways.

Anyway, how about all that taxpayers’ money that was targeted at Tory-supporting business people who suddenly became interested in supplying PPE to build back better their bank accounts?