Careerists and crooks
by Sean O Donaile.
- Mosley (Channel 4 Thurs)
- Fraud in Lambeth (Channel 4 Tues)
- The Mark Thomas Comedy Project (BBC 2- Weds)
- Star Trek;The Next Generation (Sky One)
What a wonderful world of colours we have here in
Ireland - there's the Orangemen with the flowerpots on
their heads, the Blueshirts with the red necks and
truncheons; the Reds under the bed; the purple and gold
of Vinegar Hill and our own green ribbon.
Oswald Mosley the founder of the British Blackshirts
wouldn't be found with any of the above but you can
follow his fortunes on Mosley, Channel 4 on Thursday
nights.
The series began with young Mosley uttering his
frustration at the end of World War 1: ``the only
victors of this war are those who perpetrated it..''
Strangely, his solution to this was to join the Tory
Party and take his seat in the House of Commons and eke
out a career in the grubby political arena.
Episode One concluded with Mosley uncharacteristically
criticising Black and Tan atrocities in Ireland.
His republican credentials however didn't endure as
careerism took over and he easily moved from the Tory
Party to the Labour Party before finding himself in the
fascists.
In the aftermath of their 1924 election victory, Mosley
decided to become a millionaire socialist, as he
admired ``the fortitude of the working man''.
Labour activists were readily bought over with cricket
and tea parties on the lawns of his mansion.
Upon meeting a striking railworker his wife excitedly
exclaims ``we have a lot in common , my Daddy owns a
railway!''.
With The Labour Party readily accepting patronising
careerists like Mosley, it's little wonder the course
they've taken of late.
Mosley threw himself into ``the cause of the working
man'' and those few who accused him of ``using the
working man for personal gain'' were readily dealt with
by his bouncers at public meetings.
Meanwhile the bauld Oswald led the strikers, attacked
his former colleagues in the Tory Party, and advocated
far reaching change in society.
Like any British MP worth his salt Mosley was a
philanderer and this proved his undoing as a spurned
lover distributed photos of Mosley in Sammy Wilson mode
to giggling Tory backbenchers.
The ambitious Mosley would readily fit in easily into
most of today's political parties and one suspects his
overriding reason for leading the Blackshirts was to
satisfy his huge personal ego.
If alive today Mosley would undoubtedly have created a
niche for himself in New Labour who are busily engaged
in putting an end to ``Local Government Fraud'' as
featured in ``Cutting Edge'' on Tuesday last.
Defrauding the State is a bit of a six-marker as there
are many north and south of the Border who justifiably
do so in order to eke out a living in the age of the
Celtic Tiger which doesn't roar in the way of at least
50% of our population.
Lambeth Council however is up to its uxters in debt,
and money lost to fraudsters is money lost to those
genuinely in need.
One of their principal targets is the greasy landlord
``as he fumbles in his greasy till adding the ha'pence
to the pence''.
Led by Mr Carroll the ``investigators'' raid one such
premises where only four of the stated sixteen claiming
housing benefit actually exist, with the greasy
landlord pocketing the balance with the assistance of
Mr Lewis, the chainsmoking asthmatic caretaker, who
takes most of the rap.
The intrepid investigators seem to take their job a
little too seriously, with nine of their team spending
an entire day putting a newsagent under surveillance,
as they try to decipher whether council binmen add to
their paltry wage by disposing of waste for the
hard-pressed vendor.
After informing poor Mr Khan that his wheelie bin is
stolen they take it home in their Nissan Micra as
evidence!
Most of the time the investigators seem to be bored out
of their trees and while rightly targeting landlords,
they seem to waste their energies targetting small fry.
Not so the righteous Lord Leigh and his fellow upper
class fraudsters at Stoneleigh Abbey, who benefited
personally to the tune of £7 million from the National
Lottery.
The Mark Thomas Comedy Project is both incisive and
entertaining and the exposure of the above fraud is
lower down the list of New Labour's priorities.
It's reassuring to find a fellow ``scratch your arse
leftie, who wouldn't do a day's work if they were paid,
whinging about the rich'', but it's even better when
they catch them.
Not so funny Bob Monkhouse informed us that the £7.37
million was ``to benefit the public'' and that Lord
Leigh's vast estate would be ``accessible to all''.
Unfortunately only five rooms are accessible and for 12
days of the year, as Lord Leigh finds ``people in
tracksuits `` distasteful.
The remainder is being revamped for private flats and
the vast bulk is being spent on clearing the Lord's
debts and fixing his roof.
Meanwhile the local hospice is in danger of closing,
due to lack of funds.
Methinks Mr Thomas should be employed by Lambeth
Council.
If you're really sad then ``Star Trek; The Next
Generation'' is for you.
You can see men and women in embarrassingly tight
1970's tracksuits floating around in plastic saucers
zapping each other.
There's a man with a Mars bar on his forehead, another
with a hairband over his eyes and lots of other strange
looking folk uttering classic lines such as,
``...there's an elevereum transforeum in your trousers
..'' and ``..there's a magnetic atmosphereogram in your
soup, Captain''!
Other Sky classics include ``The World's Weirdest TV'',
``Prisoners Out of Control' and 4 hours of Murphy Brown''
and ``The Little House On The Prairie'.
What with Murdoch recently being knighted by the Pope,
Sky TV might buy the television rights for The Angelus!
The moral of the story is, if you don't want to end up
with a Mars bar on your head or looking like a Martian,
steer clear of Murdoch's Empire.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)