Labour scion, Member of Parliament and the very Hotpoint, Emburey and Crippen of spin doctors. So powerful that many scenes exist just so he can be behind them But the Captain is worried The legendary Mandelson modesty appears to be under threat. Highlights will include “Follow That Hedgehog!” at 11.30am with Dr Nigel Reeve of the Roehampton Institute, and, at 4pm, “Rehabilitated Hedgehogs: Can They Cope?” with Dr Pat Morris of London University. Before that, from 2-10 September, the Water Services Association will be holding Splash & Flush Week, “a fun, informative and unusual experience” which will include the chance to tour the country’s sewage works I have provided visual illustration of both these events.

And, first up, calling all hedgehog lovers: if you’ve got anything planned for Saturday, 9 March next year, cancel it now! That’s the day the department of continuing education at Oxford will be holding a one-day symposium, “Hedgehogs: How They Behave And Why”. I will confidently wager that not one of them knows that: 1) the film star Dana Andrews was an accountant; 2) Jeremy Hanley taught accountancy, and soon may be doing so again; 3) there is a windsurfing instructor in Greece called Shiny-Happy John Edwards who used to be an accountant; 4) Warren Barton, once of Wimbledon, now of Newcastle, Britain’s most expensive defender, is an accountant; 5) John Redwood’s father, Edwina Currie’s brother-in-law, Barbara Cartland’s grandson and the father of the winner of the national Scrabble championships in1993: all accountants More balance, please

n DIARY Dates With Captain Moonlight. That’s more like it! For too long, accountants have been an easy target for the lazy, so-called “humorists” whose natural habitat is the saloon bar or the kitchen at parties where they parrot old television scripts. Not only that, but the person accountants would most like to be for a week is super-spy James Bond, while 78 per cent of accountants regard themselves as “fitting consorts” for Elizabeth Hurley.

The survey, conducted by Hays Accountancy Personnel, revealed that accountants like to wear Armani designer suits and drive soft-top sports cars. MY readers will know that the Captain is an unflinching, indomitable fighter against injustice. Falsely besmirched and canarded reputations are a speciality. This is the column that, in its time, has doughtily defended Melvyn Bragg, Canadians and dentists. So I was particularly upset that a highly important survey into attitudes among accountants received such a small amount of publicity last week.

(Compare the intro in my local paper: “A Lewes postman died in a horror crash on Tuesday …”) It may even end up like diabolical, once a word to freeze the blood, now hardly more than a passing comment.. Carnage must follow; indeed, its almost casual use in Today (“ran from the carnage” etc) suggests that it’s well on the way. The only really jolly word I can think of is carnival, which used to mean a pre-Lenten feast in preparation for the 40 meatless days; its literal meaning seems to have been “giving up flesh”.
That Today reporter may have forgotten about carnage’s long ancestry, but it’s still there Sadly, though, its batteries are rapidly running down. Popular journalism has already debased such once-strong words as terror, chilling, callous, fury and brave, hardly found now in the broadsheet press. Carnal desire, a phrase now out of fashion, reminded Christians that while the flesh brought pain it could also bring guilt Carnivores are red in tooth and claw. Milton has a personified Death recognising the path from Hell to earth by the “scent of carnage”; Byron writes of “the crowning carnage” at Waterloo Other words from the same root are just as powerful Charnel (as in charnel house) is one of them. Caro, genitive carnis, is the Latin for flesh, and carnage reeks of mangled bodies Poets have used it for horror-inducing purposes.

The story was last week’s Paris Metro explosion, but only the tabloids, so far as I could see, wheeled on the evocative word. But neither the council nor the teachers at Hackney Downs can do much about that.The writer is Emeritus Professor of Economics, Queen Mary College, London, and Labour’s industry spokesman in the House of Lords.. “SHOCKED commuters covered in blood ran from the carnage and collapsed on pavements,” said the report in Today “CARNAGE”, said the Express caption in bold capitals “Carnage in cafeland,” said the caption in the Mail. The role of central government should be to help and reinforce the local authority, not to undermine it by sending in outsiders to tell it what to do What Hackney most needs is a return to full employment.