I was woken up around five o’clock by a rustling in the oven. Since ovens do not normally rustle there had to be some outside agency at work. There was. My houseboat guest was busy trying to remove a bag of bread from beneath the lid of my lecreuset...placed in the oven to ensure that this event did not occur. The mouse was unsuccessful. This was no surprise as Le Creuset manufactures the finest enamelled cast iron cookware in then world so is mouse-resistant. According to the website Le Creuset pots are colourful, versatile, energy efficient, and have great heat retention. The rest of the food onboard is in plastic containers. Le Creuset 1 - Mouse 0. Tupperware 7 - Mouse 0.

After dozing off to sleep I awoke again at seven and was in Jempsons by eight organising my day which began with the downloading of a job from Sweden at the library. The NCAB website job needs to be translated from Swedish to English to provide a base text for the Danish, Norwegian and Finnish translators to work with next week. I promised to have the English text ready by Friday evening so we have the weekend for proof-reading.

I returned to the boat at midday and lit the fire so I could work there all afternoon. At 7.15 pm Heidi picked me up for choir practice in her new car. Afterwards I had the pleasure of her company aboard Vemara until 1130 which was unexpected as I thought we were on the verge of breaking up. Now I am not so sure. We now know that we are giving a concert on Saturday 17th June 2006 of Mozart Magic. This is going to include the Flanders & Swann song Ill Wind based on one of the Mozart Horn Concertos but arranged for four parts.

Tessa Jowell, the New Labour Culture Minister living off the crumbs from Silvio Berlusconi’s table has been given a very easy ride so far. But this may change. The urban elite are more nervous than they care to admit because they are all into tax havens and money laundering themselves. Minister Jowell and her tax avoidance expert of a husband are estimated to be worth a few million pounds at the last count…most of it in property. The reality could be much higher. Who knows what they have in offshore trusts and indirectly controlled shareholdings? However there is nothing special about Minister Jowell. If there is one thing that New Labour luvvies love it is money. Here is my report on the estimated wealth of the New Labour members for Barking, Leicester West, Slough and Stevenage.

Margaret Hodge was left shares in a £60 million steel business by her daddy and is worth an estimated £5 million with a five storey house in the same Islington street as the Blairs. Patricia Hewitt’s father used to sit on the board of Quantas and is now Australia’s top civil servant. She has a home in an affluent square in Camden and an estimated wealth well in excess of a million pounds. Fiona MacTaggert inherited a fifth of her daddy’s six million pound estate, owns property in London and a flat in her constituency ad is estimated to be worth five million. Then there is the luvvies of them all Barbara Follett. She and her husband Ken Follett are reckoned to be worth £15 million with a flat in County Hall, a house in South Africa, a home in Antigua, a flat in Soho and a mansion in Knebsworth.

When I stood as the Referendum Party for Oldham West and Royton in 1997 I had a brief dust-up with my party managers when I drew up an election manifesto that included a pledge to take out only the average UK wage for my own use and put the rest of my parliamentary salary into a lottery for welfare recipients in the constituency. The argument was that this would distract from the Referendum Party message…which was true…so I was instructed to withdraw the pledge. Shame! It seemed a good idea at the time…and still is. I wonder when some real old-style socials like George Galloway will take up the idea. It could be an election winner.

You may have wondered about the breakdown of the figure for government handout dependents in yesterday’s weblog because the official statistics provide a rather different picture. This is quite interesting. Unemployment in the UK for instance is officially about 5%...half German and French levels. Except it isn’t. The figure of 870 000 unemployed and claiming benefit does not include the 2.7 million on incapacity benefit two thirds of whom would be forced to get a job if the Government had its way.

Then there is my figure of 6.8 million state employees…up from six million when New Labour came to power in 1997. The government figures leave out university staff, general practitioners and the ever increasing number of jobs generated by government contracts. They also leave out almost 800 000 lone parents and an ever increasing number of carers. These too are included in my figure of 4.5 million out of work and on benefit.

The situation becomes clearer when we look at particular places. In Glasgow, Newcastle and Liverpool for instance a third of the population is on benefit and a third o the public payroll. In places like Cynon Valley, half an hour north of Cardiff capitalism has been virtually squeezed out of the area. Unemployment is no greater than average but almost 43 percent are on welfare and 35 percent of workers are paid by the government. As Fraser Nelson points out in his Spectator article, ‘It is against such a background that Conservatives are trying and failing to win back Wales and Scotland. In both state spending is higher than in any country in the developed world save for Sweden and France.’