My route home from work never changes. I am commuter ergo I don’t think. Don’t have to. I’m Reggie Perrin. I have a pattern. It never changes. Other than when London Transport deem changes must occur. And then I hate them for the ‘disruption’. To my schedule. To my routine.

A couple of decades ago I abandoned the ‘shortest distance between two points’ approach to getting to the tube station. The walk down Fleet Street and the Strand became ever more clogged, more jammed as entire Norwegian schools abandoned the Arctic Circle for summers on The Aldwych. Street walkers, no, not hookers, I don’t mind them, but London Walking Tour walkers, groups of obese Americans or elderly Japanese following some Lithuanian ‘cockney’ holding up a red umbrella whilst making up a fictional history for St Clement Dane in broken rhyming slang.

Too many people, too many traffic lights, cars, fucking bikes, just too much in the way.

So I now walk the civilised walk. Through the Temple, along the River to the enchanting Embankment Gardens and the station thereby. One set of traffic lights, at the back of the Savoy, where no-one ever goes, other than the hookers (see above) but they come later. Its peaceful, relatively quiet and totally gorgeous.

Last Friday, as I walked past Temple Church, I saw Shami Chakrabarti. Human Rights lawyer and former director of Liberty, the pressure group. I was possibly the last person ever to see her before she became a peer. She’s tiny. Was wearing a little-black-dress, sleeveless, fuck me heels, sweet, great big sunglasses (it was sunny) and she looked very cute. I stopped short of going up to her with the “‘ere; iss you, innit? off the telly?? Shaka whassername, innit??” Not a great line.

And yes, yesterday Shami became Dame Shami. David Cameron named 100 tossers in his ‘honours list’, Jeremy Corbyn named but one; dear Shami. And that one is more controversial than all of Davids Dorks put together.

Mainly because Corbyn had promised not to create any new Labour Lords because he deems the Upper House to be undemocratic. Which it most certainly is. He PROMISED. (The line ‘politician lies’ is never gonna make any front page, is it?) Yet he made Shami a Dame.

Just 5 weeks ago that same Shami presented the findings of her inquiry into anti-semitism in the Labour Party. And she found… none. None whatsoever. Labour Party’s fine under Corbyn; the jews are safe on his watch. Even though Corbyn is, or appears to be, rabidly anti-semitic and whether he is or he isn’t, he has somehow created a culture within his party that has released the inner jew-hater within its members. But Shami said ‘NO!’ Not a trace.

5 weeks later she’s a Dame and Corbyn has gone against everything he ever stood for to give her the honour.

I make no link. No association between these two events. Just the casual observation that: if it looks like shit, and smells like shit, it probably is shit.

Happy shitty Friday

A xxxx