Ever Had A Real Job? Moi?

QUENTIN LETTS: Buttoned-down vocal delivery. Clipped manner. The warmth of Capt Scott's tent.

Quentin Letts decribes the encounter between 'Dame' Suzi Leather, boss of the Chair of the Charity Commission, and Tory MP Liddell-Grainger in a parliamentary committee:

All of which was too much for Mr Liddell-Grainger. During the first 45 minutes of yesterday's hearing he fidgeted while listening to the Dame's dulcet tones.

But there is only so much talking-down a shires Tory can take, and yesterday Mr Liddell-Grainger reached breaking point at 10.51am. That was the moment volcano Grainger blew.

'Have you ever HAD a proper job?' he asked her loudly. He raised the membership of the Charity Commission's board. 'Have you got ANY one who's come from industry? Every single one of you seem to be quango queens.'

Committee chairman Tony Wright (Lab, Cannock Chase) tried to restrain his colleague. 'Ian!' he said. Mr Liddell-Grainger ignored him.

He started to run through the commission's board members, noting their various sins - two having a BBC background ('that's bad enough!'), one having toiled for an NHS trust, another coming from a social development outfit.

It was a glorious rant. Dame Suzi and her sidekicks reacted like ants under attack, diving for pieces of paper, recoiling, their faces filling with alarm and indignation.

At which point Mr Liddell-Grainger stood up, folded his tent, and departed for the Chamber of the Commons to pursue other matters, the day's happy little act of vandalism done. Great sport. Though not for Dame Suzi.

Charities and voluntary organisations (or 'The Third Sector' as it is officially desginated by New Labour) have been deliberately corrupted by this government as a means of spreading their 'values' without public scrutiny or awareness, and the Charity Commission itself has not been exempt.

Public life is infested with Labour's professional apparatchiks like Leather. The sooner we get rid of the lot of them the better.