Will Self

“One thing that seems to have been lost in the media blizzard surrounding the Home Secretary’s dodgy expenses claims is the nature of the ‘entertainment’ that was charged by Richard Timney – Jacqui Smith’s husband – to the taxpayers’ account. A whole slew of commentators – including feminists one might have expected to be in the van – have backed off from outright accusations of sexual immorality. There seems to be a large dose of ‘what you do in the privacy of your own home’ in circulation.

“I suspect that for women – whatever their attitude towards Smith as a politician – something feels disloyal about harping on about her husband’s use of pornography. Few women like the idea of their partner paying to view women performing sexual acts, whether in the privacy of their own homes or at a so-called lap-dancing club. But more than that, the sheer ubiquity of pornography in contemporary Britain makes it extremely unlikely that the male partners of any potential critics haven’t also done a Timney. To get at Smith and her husband involves picking away at their own private sores.”

Read the rest of Will Self’s Evening Standard column here.

“If Google’s aim is to be master of all it surveys, then the launch of Google Street View in the UK brings it that much closer to surveying, well, everything.

“Privacy campaigners have made a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner about the service, saying that blurring of number plates and faces is insufficient to protect individual anonymity.

“Personally, I can’t imagine for a nanosecond what use anyone could conceivably make of Street View, unless it was something nefarious or criminal. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, assures us that the service’s success proves that people ‘love to see what is going on in their local community’. Can he really believe that it’s better to do this online, rather than simply walk out the front door? Because that’s what I, in my hokey old way, call a street view.”

Read the rest of Will Self’s Evening Standard column here.

“Sir Paul Stephenson has chosen a good issue with which to make his mark on London’s policing, saying that he wants his officers patrolling on foot and alone.

“He’s called for a renewal of the ‘uniformed governance’ of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, when the presence of individual officers walking the beat was the sine qua non of an ordered society.

“Personally, I’m all for Sir Paul’s proposal — but only so long as London doesn’t find itself going back to the future. I agree that the individual police officer, doing the rounds, chatting with the people on his patch, is the key to good policing.”

To read the rest of Will Self’s Evening Standard column, go here.