While all this parliamentary expenses hoo-ha rumbles on – on the one hand, what appears to be a scandalous abuse of taxpayers’ money; on the other, an enjoyable chance for taxpayers to laugh at flustered MPs – one thing seems to have remained, as yet, unspoken. Which is this: really, what kind of statistical freak would Derek Conway have been if he weren’t on the fiddle? Everyone in Britain’s on the fiddle, aren’t they? Being on the fiddle is part of our heritage.

Employers know this. Indeed, employers are complicit in this. Abusing your position and stealing stuff are the “plus bonuses” part of your employ. The perk is donated in exchange for you haemorrhaging most of your life away as a demotivated wage-slave in Sector B. I think the “math”, as the Americans have it, is that you miss every single one of your children’s Nativity plays – but in exchange, get up to five nights in various Novotels FREE, and never have to buy note-paper or pens again. It’s capitalism’s warped nod to socialism. Property and distribution of wealth might not be subject to “control by the community” – but the distribution of the giant toilet rolls in the stock room is, by God.

Trying to get the free stuff off “them” – your employers, the Government, the VAT man, the council, your mum and dad – is common to every single level of society. The only differences are ones of scale. Derek Conway claimed thousands of pounds a year for his sons to work as researchers, because that – and “fact-finding missions to Malta” – is the standard form of perk in his world. As a TV critic, my standard form of perk is a free Sky subscription and all the Max Beesley promotional tea mugs my kitchen can handle. Back in Wolverhampton, meanwhile, the pub talk of my childhood was all about “claiming benefits for being your ‘disabled’ mother’s carer” this, and “dodgy MoT from ‘Dodgy MoT Chris’ ” that. Wherever and whatever it is, every community has what my father refers to as “sweeteners for the pot”.

Apparently, however, “sweeteners” aren’t a wholly global phenomenon. My Danish friend, Niels, has a fairly tart overview of the situation. “Everyone in this country works such long hours, for so little quality of life,” he says – smug in being from a nation where you’re not allowed to work more that 37 hours a week. “This fiddling is everyone trying to get a little bit back.”

If, then, fiddling, siphoning and general low-level abuse of power is a key British characteristic, I may have to hand my passport in some time soon. I’m terrible at fiddling. I feel no small amount of shame about this. I want you to understand that I have great aspirations to being corrupt – I’d love to be able to say “upgrade me to first class!” or “I’ve got some spare black-market armaments in the garage – how many do you need?” Unfortunately, however, every single attempt I’ve made to abuse my influence within society – as an upbeat arts critic and “wry” columnist – has been remarkably unsuccessful.

Only twice in my life have I done the equivalent of saying “Do you know who I am?”, ie, informing someone that, if things got nasty, I could work a very pointed reference to them in the middle of a review for Derek Acorahs’s Ghost Towns. And each time, it has, singularly, failed. As if to make it even more shaming, both these attempts occurred when dealing with the enervating monolith that is British Gas customer services. You know what? After two epic, no-holds-barred rounds with British Gas, I can only conclude that there’s nothing you can say that would make British Gas nervous. Nothing. It’s extraordinary. After two weeks without hot water, I’ve wept on the phone to its staff. I’ve raged. I’ve followed this with firmness and then, finally, I’ve dropped the bomb: saying that I know Anatole Kaletsky. But not a flicker of a response. Nothing. Just: “I’m sorry, but that’s not British Gas’s policy.”

It’s as if at some point in their training, every employee is shown a secret “graph of power on Earth”, outlining how there is nothing – not times2, not the Bilderberg Group, not even Duran Duran’s sheer determination not to retire – greater than British Gas. It fears nothing.

Encouraged by Derek Conway’s brio, I tried it on with British Gas again last week, as I froze in my boiler-less home. I took down names, numbers, everything. To be honest, I’m surprised by my own foolishness. The last time I tried to use the might of Her Majesty’s press against British Gas, in 1997, I eventually bypassed British Gas altogether, and sent a letter of extreme Watchdog-ness to CORGI, the gas regulator. I still have a copy of that letter here. It’s certainly a heartfelt attempt to abuse my position within the media, and to the utmost of my ability. “Friends on the Evening Standard and Daily Mail,” I mention at one point – feeling it unnecessary to explain that one was a fashion correspondent and the other wrote mainly about drum’n’bass.

Having tried, then, to pull strings, you can imagine my mortification a few weeks later, on receiving the following letter: “Dear Ms Moran,” it began. “Thank you for your letter. It certainly makes interesting reading. However, the CORGI you have contacted are manufacturers and distributors of diecast collectible model cars and, therefore, we cannot assist you with your gas supply.”

You see? An amateur’s attempt. I doubt that I could blag one of my children on to the House of Commons payroll, let alone two, plus one of their friends. And working from home, I have no one to steal toilet roll from but myself. Sometimes, you know, I doubt that I’m British at all.

Enough to make a White Van Man PC

The furore over the furore over Lewis Hamilton in Spain gives pause for reflection. Despite – actually, because – he is a very handsome and talented man, spectators at his Formula One test session have been screaming racist abuse at him. One particularly artistic group expressed its dislike by blacking up and wearing T-shirts with “Hamilton’s Familly [sic]” written on them. In Britain, this has been treated with indignant, all-encompassing, self-righteous fury. Even the Sun’s online message board – after the paper’s censorious front-page story on the incident – finds this behaviour beyond the pale, to the extent that one contributor to the site, an archetypal White Van Man who refers to “coloured folks” throughout, is down on those racist Spaniards.

This is ironic, given that these same message posters would deem themselves to be on the front line in the daily battle against “political correctness”. The same political correctness that, 15 years ago, was educating them and their parents about how stuff like this wasn’t, actually, “a laugh”. Political correctness – the presence of which here, and absence of which in Spain, accounts for this occurring in the first place. The political correctness that, touchingly, the Sun posters are now proud to adhere to. I’ve never understood why people are down on “political correctness”. Nine times out of ten, you could simply call it “politeness”.

Running gags

Now that we have someone who is openly a woman and someone who is openly African-American running for the White House, how long will it be before someone openly gay, or transgender, runs? Aside from the opportunities for jokes – the Pink House, Washington AC/DC, the First Lady-Boy – it would also be a cheering day when we all allowed ourselves to utilise the leadership powers of everyone with good ideas. (Blimey, both these columny bits sound like Jerry Springer’s “Final Thought”, don’t they? Take care of yourselves – and each other.)

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