Plumbing the depths

The Count prefers the High Life. It is certainly cheaper than the low life. The lowest forms of life always seem to turn out to be the most expensive: think of Tony Blair and his addiction to spending all the Count's ill-gotten gains.

So the Count has decided to go on a fearless journey of discovery in search of the lowest form of life on the planet. It turned out that the Count did not have to look far: the low life crawled in through the front door. The slime ball claimed to be a plumber and then charged the Count £120 for changing a flange. Apparently flanges are little bits of rubber which stop things leaking, like condoms but less useful.

The plumber joins the ranks of other low life, like "sand and cement Jim" who never saw a building problem which he could not tosh up with a little sand and cement, plus £300 for his efforts. Leaking drains? Sand, cement and £300 will tosh it up mate. Dodgy window? Sand, cement and £300 will sort it out. Cash will do nicely, but a good horse whipping would do even better.

But plumbers, builders and decorators are amateurs compared to the real low life. Consultants and lawyers are just the same as plumbers: fat, self-serving, greedy, you can never find a good one when you need one, the job is always trickier than you first thought (because you hired the wrong person last time) and so it will take twice as long and cost four times as much as you first thought. But this is your lucky day: they have just the person to sort it out for you. The only difference is that the so-called professionals wear fancy shirts which justify even fancier bills than the plumbers.

This is what happens when you let the servants get ideas above their station.

But the real low life are the shit bags who con their way into major construction projects which you know will escalate in cost out of control. Let's start with an easy one: the upgrade of the West Coast train line. This was a simple project which should have cost an outrageous £2 billion to upgrade 400 miles of track to take train speeds up from 110 mph to 140 mph. It should have been ready this year. Now it looks like the cost is going past £10 billion; the trains will not be able to run faster than 125 mph if they ever get round to completing the project. Overall train times will decline because operators are fined for being late, so their logical solution is to pad the timetable so much that even if they are delayed, they still will not be late: so they build delay into their timetables. £10 billion and the Count is still counting for absolutely zero improvement.

And we have not even got round to the Scottish Parliament (politicians controlling costs - this is a positively dangerous idea as it will make any sane person either die laughing, go mad or become a homicidal maniac: in the Count's case he may achieve all three outcomes). Then there is the Dome: more politicians controlling costs. Ha. Let's talk about nuclear power stations, the Jubilee Line extension or any other major project in the last 25 years. Or rather, let's not talk about it, because it is too depressing.

The low life complain about the extravagence of the aristocracy. Extravagent, us? We are into recylcing our house decorations and china: that is what we use Sotheby's for. Sell a Rembrandt and buy a Monet. Or, more likely, sell a Monet to pay for more mindless extravagence of a government that is addicted to spending. The Commons costs five times as much to run as the Lords and do five times as much damage.

So if you want to stop extravagence and waste then get rid of the low life, the Count will humbly take over from Tony's cronies. A few million a year for the Count as Prime Minister is far better value than the thousands of overpaid cronies and low life that live in and on governmetn wasting billions on projects that deliver zero value.