"Spooks" and The Real Power Inquiry

Some may remember the so-called Power Inquiry, chaired by the fragrant (some may also recall this epithet was applied to Mary, wife of Jeffrey, Archer) Helena Kennedy QC. The report of this so-called "inquiry" seems to have sunk without trace, although Baroness Kennedy carries on talking, rarely pausing for breath* when given the opportunity of a media airing.

This brings me naturally enough to the subject of sado-masochism, or S&M, which I somehow also associate with the last recession (early 1990s and all that). It was at this time that Madonna (always a barometer of zeitgeist) published a volume called, straightforwardly enough, "SEX", which was sold in a sealed foil bag, I think, and had strong S&M overtones, which the entertainer later said were heavily laced with irony. Maybe.

It may also have been about this time that proclivities of the former Lord Archer, consort of prostitutes started to emerge. He, like Max Mosley, by all accounts, paid handsomely for his pleasures with Ladies of the Trade, although there was no suggestion that these involved shame and degradation, that came later when he committed, amongst other things, the crime of perjury.

Nor was there any suggestion that one of Jeffrey Archer's consorts was the wife of a senior British Security Services officer, as was a member of Max Mosley's sexual consortium (some might say "orgy"). This lady's husband (a director of either MI5 or 6 ?) had to resign as a consequence. Not even a Howard Brenton penned episode of "Spooks" could have imagined this !


Now, whilst for the likes of Madonna, or Helena Kennedy QC for that matter, 500 knicker (as they used to be called) for a giving someone a good spank might not seem worth getting out of bed for, many of us, like the spook's spouse, would feel empowered by such generous financial reward, even if we had to buy our own work gear.

All this said, I'm naturally concerned that senior public servants (and particularly high level spooks) may not be earning enough money if their spouses feel the need to go on The Game, even if it's a game by another name. Have their earnings not kept pace with those of other senior public officials ?. I'm thinking of local authority chief executives on c£200k pa, for instance.

For my money, these are precisely the sort of issues a Power Inquiry should have examined, and if not, why not ? Perhaps Baroness Kennedy was not, as I strongly suspect, the right woman for the job. Do New Labour lack a dominatrix of suitable clout ? Or could this be a new role for Cherie Booth-Blair ? Not a woman averse to making a good whack, by all accounts !

However, we should be grateful that, in the case of Max Mosley, any extraordinary rendition of "Allo, Allo !" (which German TV has recently procured and is now showing) was confined to role play amongst "friends" in the basement of his London home. Equally reassuring, is that all surveillance (in the best public interest of course !) was conducted by The News of the World, and not by some hostile foreign power, unless of course the Murdoch Empire constitutes one.

"Breath" : a very good contemporary novel by Tim Winton which strikes a serious note on S&M; as does the equally good "Fame & Fortune" by Frederick Raphael about the Thatcher years.