The lure of politics
No 4082
Set by Dipak Ghosh
We asked you to complete the following sentence (and add a few more for good measure): “I came into politics because . . .”

Report by Ms de Meaner
Well done. The five politicians are, in the order below: William Hague, John Prescott, Sir Peter Viggers, Iain Duncan Smith and Dennis Skinner. Basil Ransome-Davies and Adrian Fry get £25 each, Barrie Heads gets a tenner and the two singletons can have £5 book tokens. The Tesco vouchers go, in addition, to Adrian Fry, who was simply superb.

Career advancement
I came into politics because I wanted a dramatically accelerated career profile, and I got it. From conference-wowing boy wonder to youthful (albeit balding) party leader to humiliated laughing stock in a baseball cap to elder statesman with a senior shadow portfolio – and all without holding a government office higher than Secretary of State for Wales – I lived the dream. That hectic, roller-coaster pattern went, I always felt, with my authentic Yorkshire identity: virile, charismatic, no-nonsense, a serious political thinker with an MBA from INSEAD but also a bit of a beer monster. Complex, in other words. And a true patriot, as I made clear when I promised to give the British back their country. Maybe next time they’ll listen.
Basil Ransome-Davies

That class thing
I came into politics because frankly, and then there’s the whole class thing and so forth. Besides, redistribution of iniquities of opportunity are absolutely embedded in what I see as just getting on with delivering public services day after month after inevitably. Because for me, education is activism and failing one eleven-plus didn’t stop me finding out what eleven plus one was. And thirteenthly, working at the coalface of governance while showing a clean pair of hands, and that’s vitally. But politics aren’t just about saying, it’s about meaning, essentially. Mithering won’t change the cistern, my Mam reckoned, and how are you to know whether she’s right or wrong without trying, eh?
Adrian Fry

Feathered friends
I came into politics because I have always been jolly interested in ducks. Even when I was at prep school I had a pet duck – named Winston, if you’re interested. Entering the House of Commons I found the fees chappies were keen on ducks, too. So there I was in parliament and able to build a really super island for my little friends. But, through no fault of my own, it all went wrong and I found myself left with the bill.
Barrie Heads

I came into politics because of the inspirational discussions I took part in during my time at the University of Perugia.
Owen Matthews

I came into politics to get away from the wife.
Sid Field

No 4085 The building that speaks
Set by Hank T Romein
The news media like to employ a figure of speech called metonymy and regularly claim to have received statements from streets and buildings. Let us take them literally and imagine that, for example, Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, the White House and the Kremlin really do possess the power of speech. What might they, or other roads or buildings, have reported happening during the centuries?

Max 125 words by 16 July
Email: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

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This England
Each printed entry will receive
a £5 book token. Entries on a POSTCARD, please, to This England, NS, 1st Floor, Boundary House, 91-93 Charterhouse Street, London, EC1M 6HR

In the long grass
It might be public land, but Brian Hubbard treats the grass verge outside his home as proudly as his own garden.

The retired civil servant regularly mows, weeds and rakes the small patch, and selflessly clears up other people’s litter.

But a letter from Herefordshire’s parks, countryside and leisure development service ordered the grandfather to put down his shears and return the land “to its original state within 28 days” – or the work will be carried out by contractors and charged to him.

On Thursday, Mr Hubbard, 72, said that when he queried the letter, a council official told him that if the grass was too tidy “people might not feel they could walk over it”.
Daily Mail (F Harvey)

Not national policy
High street chain WH Smith apologised today after promoting a book, The Crimes of Josef Fritzl, on cellar rapist Josef Fritzl as a Father’s Day gift.

A spokeswoman for WH Smith apologised saying it was “a mistake by one store”. She added: “It is not national policy. We will rectify this immediately.”
Evening Standard (Ron Rubin)

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