It's vanished! Did the council Gestapo remove it?

Almost exactly a year ago, to my huge delight, this Banksy mural appeared on the wall next to the Post Office depot at the end of Newman Street, where my office is.

Banksy's stuff sells for as much as £250,000, it was a wonderful splash of colour - and I like the political comment. So what happened next? Some constipated arsehole from Westminster Council said it was defacing the building and should be removed.

I have no views on whether it's a great work of art, but it has to be 1000 times better than a blank wall. And a blank wall is what it now is. It has vanished. Maybe it was removed by the creep in question. I'm sure this apparatchik - had he been alive at the time, if indeed he has ever been alive - would have taken one look at the Cistine Chapel and had the ceiling whitewashed.

Does anyone know his name? Such pustules on the body politic should be named and shamed.

Now am I surprised he's a crook, too? No. But should we just put up with it?

When the Nazi leaders at the end of the war were tried, the prosecutors bent some of the rules.

Nobody lost too much sleep over that. They were criminals, everyone could see, just as Pol Pot and his followers were, just as Mugabe is.

There are some things you just recognise - like beauty. And crime.

No; I'm not in the least bit surprised that Eyebrows Darling, current guardian of our nation's financial probity, is ripping us all off on phoney expenses for homes he doesn't need and makes a profit from, any more than I'm surprised that most of the people in parliament are doing the same including the Great Bloat Who Is Too Busy Saving The Universe To Learn To Count.

They all say "but I am not breaking any rules." Nor were any of the people who ran Auschwitz and Belsen. They were just following orders. And who made the orders? The criminals in charge.

Who has made the orders that allow all these politicians to steal millions? They did. They are in charge. And they are crooks.

It is not good enough to say others are worse. Yes; they have bigger crooks in the U.S. They have much bigger crooks in Italy and Russia. They have much, much bigger crooks infesting all Africa. It is a matter of setting an example.

The failure to set an example is destroying our society. And we should make an example of the people who fail to set an example, because whatever the law says, these people are crooks. The Home Secretary is ultimately in charge of the police force. She is a crook. No wonder the police feel it is O.K. to kill an innocent news vendor as they did the other day. If their boss doesn't have to answer for her actions, why should they?

Geoffrey Hoon - the Transport Minister - is a bigger crook. (Did you know that "hoon" is Aussie slang for a pimp? Very appropriate.)

Nor are they all from one party. Scots M.P. Malcolm Bruce who got £50,000 for one ten day trip to China is a Lib Dem crook. Red-faced speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin is supposed to be above party (which he isn't) and he certainly isn't above claiming phoney expenses. He is a crook.

When Smoothie-Chops Cameron pretends to be riding a bike to work but is followed by a car, he is dishonest. He is a crook. When they all fly off to jaunts described as fact-finding tours, they are dishonest. They are crooks. When the jaunts are to do with saving the planet they are doubly crooks - and taking the piss.

A country gets the politicians it deserves. What have we done to deserve this lot?

Measured reaction to economic crisis

I see that Ministers are not being panicked by the economic crisis, because for them there isn't one.

Porqui "My old man's a wanker" Smith billed taxpayers £40 for a barbecue in her second home - no doubt on the grounds that "every little helps". Imagine what would happen if the Inland Revenue caught you or me doing this.

Mind you she says she is "just about 100% sure" she did not claim for it. What would that be then, dearie? 93% sure? 77% sure? Not sure at all because you're chronically dishonest? Isn't that the second home you're ripping us off for in the first place? Does your "parliamentary aid" get boxes of tissues on expenses? Are you sure? How sure?

Anyhow, there are more important things for the good and great to focus on than the Home Secretary being dishonest or the country going down the pan. The other day I was relieved to see that the Almighty Bloat has warned the North Koreans to mend their ways. Has this reduced the rogues to shuddering fear, with The Beloved Leader fleeing to the hills in panic? Or did they just say, "Who gives a shit?" at the thought of being threatened by the Western world's worst economic manager? Maybe they just said, "Gordon Who? Oh, that pompous fool."

At home I read that many menus are to incorporate calorie counts: a wise strategic move that should kick-start the economy. The last place I saw anything like that on a menu was in Krakow - on an old menu left over from the communist era. But then surely you have noticed that in everything it does this government has emulated the Stalinist approach, right down to driving the country into bankruptcy.

The Baldrick approach to running things

When I read the news this morning it suddenly occurred to me that the only way to describe this government is to say that it has the Baldrick approach to problems.

British readers will recognise Baldrick, shown here, as the buffoonish sidekick of Blackadder in the TV series. Whenever problems cropped up, Baldrick always said "I have a cunning plan" which invariably turned out to be half-witted.

So, now that every business is groaning under the weight of producing money to pay for all the idiotic initiatives, billion pound computer programmes that don't work, hordes of termite-like unproductive bureaucrats, theft by ministers and MPs (it turns out that we're paying for three homes for one particularly avarious wretch called Hoon) a new piece of lunacy has landed in our laps.

Now parents are to allowed even more time off to recover from the ordeal of having babies. I remember well what a trauma it was for me. I used to keep fainting at my typewriter from the emotional strain of it all. This is, of course, time off employers will be paying for.

However, no worries, because EU regulations to be introduced will make it illegal for us all to work more than 48 hours a week. This, it is estimated, will cost us £11.9 billion a year, screw up the hospitals and fire service. And land me in jail.

I actually remember visting a firm in Germany a few years ago, where they explained to me that to get round this insane regulation they used to work in secret after 6 o'clock with half the lights turned off.

That won't happen here. Whilst elsewhere in Europe they know it's a farce and only obey the rules when it suits them our idiots will hire an army of snoops to make sure we don't cheat.

At this rate in a few years about one person in ten in this country will be doing things that make money and the other nine will be paid to snoop. "Are you sorting out your garbage properly?" "Are you stopping work when you should?" "Don't park there." "Remove that Christmas tree, it will offend minorities." And so on.

Even Baldrick would have known it makes no sense.

By the way, how come nobody's suggested we put a statue up in Parliament Square to the Blessed Jade Goody?

Garbage in, garbage out

That's an old acronym from the computer business you probably recognise.

It sprang to mind not in the context of the mountain of half-truths concocted by the G20 cronies to kid us they are doing anything as a result of their mutual back-slapping, but because of a nagging professional interest

I just keep asking myself if by any chance the recession will get rid of the mountains of sloth, ignorance and stupidity in the form of human garbage that infects the marketing industry.

I wonder about this in a spirit of hopeful, but not optimistic enquiry. Not optimistic because here is a typical example of what happens every day all over the world.

My Australian partner, Malcolm Auld, is one of the best known figures in the industry there. His book, Direct Marketing Made Easy is a required text. For twenty odd years he's been speaking (very entertainingly) all over the country and in much of South East Asia on the subject.

I've even shipped him over here a couple of times and stooped to stealing one or two of his better jokes. So here's what happened to him not long ago

He was asked by an organisation to tender for some work – quite a substantial series of projects. Let him tell the story.

"They wanted full costings, typical timelines and potential discounts (creative and print) for briefing all jobs at once.

We submitted a tender because we’re already doing a major job for them.

They ask us to a meeting to answer questions, which I confirmed by e-mail because I wanted to make sure they weren’t looking for credentials.

We get there and they point to the data projector for our presentation. I say, 'but you confirmed we were here to answer your questions – how long would you like me to speak about myself?'

There were 5 women there. The lady leading it was English. Her first question was: 'How long does it take you to get the reverse brief back to us, where you convert our brief into your creative brief?'

Apparently that’s the usual way she works - obviously spent too much time in big agency land and has been convinced by her agency that clients cannot write briefs."

(Incidentally, I've never heard of this reverse briefing crap. Obviously an ingenious new way of wasting time and money whilst trotting out another piece of pretentious jargon)

"Then the events manager wants to know what qualifications I have in direct marketing."

(That was the bit that got me. Here's one of the very best known direct marketers in Australia, who's written the book - and this silly cow's never heard of him.)

Mal goes on:

"Then they tell us that only one of them has even read our tender response, so can we elaborate on it as they haven’t had time to read it."

(Interesting. No time to do the one thing they should have done; plenty of time to demonstrate their idleness and ignorance in a meeting).

"Then when I ask why they are changing agencies, they tell us they haven’t decided if they want to change agencies. Yet 4 agencies were meeting with them that day to pitch their business.

None of them knew we were already working with them and it was their Director who recommended we be put on the list for the tender."

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? How did they all find enough time to attend a meeting but not enough to do five minutes' homework?

I might add that this business of "tendering" is absurd. You can't evaluate this stuff on price. You're not building a bloody motorway, you fools. Only the results matter. So a test is the easiest, cheapest and only sensible approach.

How do these people get jobs?