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of the House of Windsor, the dull-minded horror of the IRA, and the ever

with us hooligan horde now identified by the Prime Minister as ''The Yob

Culture''. I refer to the words ''pamper'', ''appeasement'', and

''exuberance''.

Pamper -- long ago hijacked as the trade name of an apparently

essential nether garment for babies of the disposable generation -- was

used on this occasion by an angry MP to describe members of the court of

Camelot, the all-things-to-all-men showbiz hot property that has, in

recent years, replaced this country's First Family.

The MP was angry, as were -- one imagines -- many others, to learn of

the high cost to the public purse of the royal family and their court in

telephone bills, grace and favour residences, up-keep of palaces and the

like. Twenty million pounds in these belt-tightening days does not look

like a taut ship. A phone bill running out at #1500 a year for each and

every member of the royal household -- the thick end of three-quarters

of a million pounds all in -- gives the impression of profligacy, even

if one merely breathes at the recipient when the call is connected.

But it is doubtful if the criticism has struck home. In an undertaking

that has 15 royal properties and some 500 members in the royal

household, including a Sculptor in Ordinary, a Hereditary Carver, a

Warden of the Swans, and even, with prescience, a Coroner, the word

pamper probably left them non-plussed. I imagine that the Captain

General of the combined Cadet Force -- those skinny would-be Rambos

which Britain so oddly trains to kill for Queen and Country from age 14

up -- was puzzled. She may well have turned to the Colonel-in-Chief of

the Royal Australian Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers to get

the distilled wisdom of one whose family successfully weathered a

name-change, transmogrified from a coloured sponge cake to an unscalable

Munro. Can it have been in both their minds that the Honorary Air

Commodore for RAF Wittering, notwithstanding her pleadings of

incompetence with pay-phone and parking meter, had been going on a bit?

Too much self-inflicted exposure in the popular press, air-brushed or

otherwise, too many revelations of privilege and greed, spectacular and

crass consumption that far outweighs in-put -- and no comeuppance -- all

add up in the public mind to a clear understanding of just what is meant

by pamper.

But what do we mean by ''appeasement''? That is the word -- it has

become an allegation -- that is being used in connection with the

treatment of IRA prisoners at the formerly allegedly high security

Whitemoor Prison from which five of the bhoys, armed and as dangerous as

always, legged it at the start of the weekend. Staff there claim they

are discouraged from searching food parcels -- presumably for the

presence of that popular prison delicacy, file-cake -- and that their

superiors have bowed to intimidation by terrorist prisoners,

discouraging the prison officers from antagonising them, their relatives

or their legal advisers. A policy of appeasement, they say, is in

operation.

That would be an allegation fit to shock every man, woman, and child

in this country and upset even the horses in the shafts were it not for

the fact that the public at large, thanks to politicians, has discovered

the meaning of the phrase ''hidden agenda''. Given that they already

know the meaning of pamper this is now an educated public well able to

judge just what is likely to have been going on -- or not -- at

Whitemoor Prison. Lavish praise has been heaped by those who should

carry the can on those who brought back the run-aways who should not, in

the first case, have been on the loose . . . which, as the Great British

Public knows, can be summed up in the word ''diversion'': a word that so

often comes to mind before the word ''whitewash'' which is uttered on

the publication, months later, of the results of an inquiry into a murky

affair.

And so to ''exuberance'', the bon mot employed by Tory chairman Jeremy

Hanley to blow out of the water his boss's latest attempt to win hearts

and minds already taken up with pamper and appeasement. John Major may

have thought he had come up with a fire-proof slogan when he unburdened

himself on the subject of the Yob Culture but now he knows that, as with

Back to Basics, a lieutenant needed but a few hours to turn even the

stoutest platform into a badly charred ruin.

Mr Hanley was giving his opinion on the behaviour of fans at a boxing

tournament who got tore in themselves and used chairs to drive the point

of their argument into the heads of those less intellectually favoured

than themselves. Mr Hanley thought this behaviour ''exuberant''. Now he

says he has thought again. Alas for Mr Hanley the GBP also knows the

full meaning of the phrase ''second thoughts''. They know that second

thoughts can follow exuberance after a phone call from Number Ten and a

late-awakened self-interest for one's political future.

Yobs, says Mr Major, have been pampered. Hitler, we know, was

appeased. And exuberance, as Mr Hanley has discovered, was a gaffe.