workhouse

i was in the process of writing a piece for this that concerned itself with the "lurch" to the right of the conservative party. there was a nice little comment in the mail on saturday (october 9th) where ian woolridge complained that the bbc was once again showing it's bias by describing the conservative party and howard's conference as being a "lurch to the right", asking why is there never a lurch to the centre?
of course to ian and most the the readers of the mail - there is no such thing as being too far right.
sadly for howard and the tories it is really difficult for them to be in the centre right as it is a territory that has been overrun by new labour in their rush to become the new tories. you only have to look at blunkett and his move to curtail as much civil liberties as he can, look at new labours love of PFI etc etc have it camping on the outer reaches of the centre right.
so for howard and the tories they have to find new ways to distinguish themselves from new labour. so its more talk about lower taxes, tougher on crime and, of course, tougher on immigration (and look they are not racist, well not much). not only do they have to worry about new labour, but now they are running scared of the extreme parties such as UKIP or the BNP. in both cases rather than ignore the extremists they outflank them to become more extreme or bizarre.
where the BNP talk about immigration - the tories and david davis have to be tougher on immigration in order to prevent the loss of a handful of votes. and why do they feel they have to do this, according to davis it is so it can be dealt with by a "sensible" party in a sensible way. except that the tories froth at the mouth and may as well say - if you are not rich you ain't coming in, the only other way in is to promise to clean our toilets for 2 years and then we deport you. yup they steal the thunder of the BNP but end up just a few gooseteps short of a nazi party.
while on the other hand UKIP talk about leaving europe totally, the tories just want to ditch bits of europe - the bits they don't like - social charter, fisheries policy etc. not only is that such a lame and half hearted thing as to be unworkable - they just give credence to UKIP.

but it is so easy to be on the left and laugh at them until you read .......
"Workers should be forced to train to improve their skills, the new special adviser to Alan Milburn, Labour's general election coordinator, proposes today as part of an attempt to cut social immobility and inequality.
He also suggests "significant" penalties where individuals fail to attend parenting, childcare or literacy programmes.
Tony Blair signalled a welfare crackdown in a speech in Budapest yesterday in which he said he would stop people "languishing on benefits" and attempt to free people from a culture of dependency. " (from the guardian)

of course in principle there is something to be admired about plans to enable individuals to better themselves, but you just know that this will be one of those things that ends up penalising individuals.
whatever happened to companies training their workforce ? no need i guess when you can plan to send it all to india.
to be honest i distrust anyone who talks about people as human capital as this article does.

new labour seem to be hellbent on bring back a class system, not that most of them care as they seem to have their noses firmly up the arses of the rich.