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Saturday, August 28, 2010

milibands

who would be a miliband right now.
one of them feared by the tories, the other one regarded a joke.
hard to tell which one has been dammed with feint praise or been given a a back handed compliment.

still the question of who will lead the labour party will be resolved soon and that means that labour can start to be an effective opposition against the con/dems.
at the moment the con/dems have an open goal and to their credit cameron and his cronies have been using the space the labour leadership contest has created to redefine the problems that face the country.
that time has allowed the con/dems to lay the blame of the deficit at the feet of public sector workers rather than those in the financial sector who created and perpetuated it. in doing so the con/dems are making sure that the people who pay the most and lose the most will be the poor.

so whoever becomes the labour leader they had better be ready for the fight ahead.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

cunt

the con/dems have floated the idea of a graduate tax.
it is not such a bad idea.

not according to robert from knutsford who had this to say in the daily telegraph on monday:
"on average, the graduate will cost the country less than the non-graduate in unemployment and other social benefits, or in prison costs."

of course graduates are never unemployed.
of course graduates never claim any other benefit.
of course graduates never break the law and get banged up.

because a degree isn't just about knowledge - it is a passport to an unblemished life.

utter fucking tosh.

Monday, August 23, 2010

rain

pissing down outside.
i am loving the sound of the rain against the window and as it splashes on the pavements outside, the splish of cars as they go by.
i like the rain.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

wanker

"is there really anyone in Britain who needs to beg?
I suppose it’s possible that an honest person, prepared to work and free of drugs, can end up destitute on the street, thanks to some mad bureaucratic Catch-22."

so says the daily mail columnist peter hitchens (now i have to say i have problems with both the hitchens brothers, yet there is a special ire for peter).

his most recent column points to all that is wrong with david cameron's 'big society' idea.

the state may not be perfect at providing care for all of the citizens in its care, it tries its best, is (in theory) impartial as to those it provides care to, most importantly it is accountable to the people.

the charity of the 'big society' moves that impartial care into the hands of private (more often than not rich) individuals. universal care becomes private charity.

for the people like peter hitchens before you are cared for you will have to bow and scrape, tug your forlock and prove that you are the deserving poor.

i suppose peter deserves our thanks for reminding us what the future holds under the compassionate conservatives of cameron.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

green

the soundtrack to the coalition government is one sea shanties and marching songs reminding us that in the new politics we are in it together.
david cameron’s big idea is of ‘the big society’. simply put the ‘big society’ is volunteering writ large. so praise sir philip green for showing us how it is done. sir philip is an unpaid (though i suspect he gets expenses) financial trouble-shooter for the government. he is going to see where efficiencies can be made. sir philip green is going bring the expertise that made him a billionaire in the business world and use it to make government that much better. oh yes he will.
(oh do you remember the times when there were criticisms of labour for all the unelected experts that they were using to run the country? i guess when you are an unelected government it seems a little churlish to just pick on the one or two (or three or four) unelected experts you are using. besides we are all in it together so don’t get your panties in a tizzy big fella.)
sir philip has stepped up to the plate to show that even a billionaire can find time to do his bit for the country, and if he can do that in his busy schedule (which includes flying off in his private jet at the weekends to spend the weekend with his family who live in monaco) then matey you sure the hell can spend some time doing something in your local area, so stop being a fucking nay sayer. the big society is going to work.
if top shop’s boss can show himself to be a top bloke – then so can you.
so what if sir philip green has indulged in some tax avoidance, it is not like it is illegal or anything.
let’s be fair here – if you want the government to save money and be more efficient you really do want someone who knows all the angles and can get out of paying his share of taxes, if he can do that imagine how good he is going to be slashing and burning government budgets. so while he is paying as little as he can (and remember it is legal) he will be looking to make sure that some of the less well off in society are potentially less well off.
but remember we are all in it together, so we should forgive sir philip his indiscretion, after all we have forgiven the bankers and they are not giving up their time to help the government, not like sir philip. besides we know who are responsible for the mess we are in it isn’t anything to do with a global financial crisis caused by bizarre financial arrangements that made sense to three people, it is to do with civil servants/ public sector workers/ scroungers/ immigrants (delete where applicable). the rest of us? well we are in it together (though some of us, say for instance sir philip green, david cameron, george osborne (just to pick some names at random) are slightly better off than the rest of us).
i am sure when sir philip returns to his monaco home at the weekend he thinks about the potential damage he will cause to the lives of many in the country in the name of efficiencies safe in the certain knowledge that david cameron’s big society will step in to help those much less fortunate than he. sir philip may not pay his taxes like the rest of us, but he is giving his time.
just remember we are in this together and the rich feel our pain.

(oh and did you know that tax avoidance means losses to the exchequer of some £25bn a year, while benefit fraud and error costs the government some £5bn a year. guess which one is a target for the con/dems, guess which one of them is going to be used to allow credit rating agencies to look at the accounts of people?
shit you guessed.)

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

names

i feel a little abashed to admit this but i didn’t know who james cleverly was until tonight.
i should have done.
now i can’t quite make up my mind as to whether or not i like him. obviously i can’t really like him as he is a conservative (the deputy leader of the london assembly, if you must know), but i do admire him for some straight talking.
true his straight talking isn’t about tory policy, his straight talking is name calling. hey what can i say sometimes you just have to like schoolyard politics, or in different circumstances it would be called bullying?
simon hughes, the liberal democratic party deputy leader, has made the outrageous statement that backbench liberal democrat mps should have a right to veto the coalition government’s policies.
frankly the idea seems a bit silly – if the mps don’t like it they just vote against in the house. there is your veto sonny jim.
yet when you read what hughes said
"if the coalition wants to deliver [parliamentary] votes, neither party on its own has a majority, so we have to make sure everyone is brought into that.
"as a matter of practical politics... the parliamentary party on behalf of the wider party on big issues has to be able to say 'no, we can't go down this road'."

it becomes a case of him saying that if the coalition government want to get polices through then it needs to make sure that it has all the backbenchers onside at the time of a crucial vote. the best, and simplest, way to do that would be to give the backbench mps a chance to hear the plans in advance of them being announced and letting the powers that be that ‘oh dear, that is a truly bad idea and we can’t support it’. see simple. ministers can then decide if they can get the policy through or not. if not: plan vetoed. simple.
given all the bollocks the con/dems have chucked out about ‘new politics’ what simon hughes has suggested seems perfectly logical in light of the collaborative nature of the con/dem coalition.
well it would be if you weren’t james cleverly. nope for james simon is a “fool” a “bone-head” oh and: “we may be coalition partners but it doesn't stop me thinking that simon hughes is a dick.”
(now i have to admit this does warm me towards james cleverly, although i can’t help but wonder just how smart it is to go public and on your own blog with such supportive language. look it is fine for me to call people all the names under the sun on my blog for the simple reasons that very few people read it, even fewer believe it and, most importantly (and london’s loss) i am not the deputy leader of the london assembly. so i can pretty much say what i like. not sure it works that way for the deputy leader.)
james goes on to say “but, as i have said before, a lib dem who isn't prepared to enter a coalition with anyone except labour isn't a lib dem. they're labour.”
one of the reasons hughes has come out with his veto plan is obvious: liberal democratic support is disappearing down the swanee river. this is just one way for hughes to remind people that the liberal democrats are still nice people. he is not suggesting that the liberal democrats should not be in the coalition (though he doesn’t rule out a potential coalition with labour in the future, which may make hughes a political tart).
while james’ point has some validity in that there is no point in campaigning for proportional representation if there is only one party you would join with, the converse is also true that you can’t besmirch them just because they don’t join your party (i am sure that made more sense in my head than it does written down).
in the end you can’t help but feel that james may be speaking for the rest of the tories out there – they know they need the lib dems to stay in power, but they just wish they would shut the fuck up and let the tories get on with screwing the poor over and stop pretending that they are the conscience of the coalition government as no one cares what they think and we all know that the liberal democratic ministers have sold their souls to play with the big boys.
still like i say i can’t help but warm to cleverly because his website does allow for such comments as:
rob said...
james cleverly, you are a cunt.
and then he goes and loses some kudos by posting this
“..but if i have genuinely caused offence, i apologise.

to be fair name calling is a bit childish.”
sounds like someone has been told off.
perhaps a case of cleverly by name, but not by nature…

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

tony

tony
there was a time when i quite fancied the idea of being a politician. i am happy to admit i would have made a shit one, if only because of my propensity to swear. though in today’s climate i could have used that ‘narrative’ (i fucking hate that word) to score me the top job. imagine it the first prime minister with mild tourettes? fucking brilliant. (yes i would have had to lie about the tourette’s but that is beside the point).
however the last few years have been a reminder that a politician’s lot is not a happy one. few people like them, fewer people trust them
it must be soul destroying to go into a career with hope in your heart and a desire to change the country, the world for good and you end up being thought of as thieving scum. (of course for the conservatives this is not such a problem as they have no souls to start with).
so tony has written a book about his time as prime minister.
he has had a big advance for it, it is more than likely going to sell very well – i know i want a copy.
now tony isn’t a poor man. generously he has decided to give the advance and any profits to the british legion.
what a bastard. it is blood money, he is trying to buy absolution, he should never have taken us to war in the first place, and he should have funded the wars better. blah blah shittingly blah blah. the daily mail is there trumpeting this attack on blair, even quoting lindsay german the convener of ‘stop the war’ and also of the socialist workers party (hey enemy of my enemy is my friend, i guess).
they even say that by giving the money to charity he is robbing the taxman. yeah that works. if you care about robbing the taxman then i will be expecting a lot of stories about what total tossers all those non-doms are. don’t think i will hold my breath waiting.
if tony had said, do you know what the mail is going to call me a cunt no matter what i do so i may as well keep the cash imagine what the outcry would have been then?
that is the thing for politicians they can never win. if they change their minds they are seen as being weak, if they stubbornly stick to the same idea regardless of the facts they are dogmatic. if they make a single mistake they should fall on their swords (of course this happens so often in the real world – hey just look at all those bankers who have… oh collecting more throat gagging bonuses).
still while for most politicians are being thought of shit on the bottom of your shoe, tony blair is enjoying the free publicity he is getting for his book and the subsequent speaking engagements he will get on the back of it.
at least tony has given the british legion something, can’t help wondering how many of the commenters on the mail’s message boards will be putting their hands in their pockets and sending some money to the british legion?

Monday, August 02, 2010

tubes

the first air-conditioned tube was supposed to have left the station today.
good news for all commuters.
for the moment it is just one line, the metropolitan line, with the rest to follow over the coming years. boris will get a lot of the credit for it, even though it was a plan put in motion before he was elected. (not that boris is shy about taking credit, he has spoken of the olympics as his ticket to re-election, again something someone else did most of the hard work on).

if there is one thing that boris could do that would make london's public transport system even better it would be to talk to the bus drivers and remind them that in the middle of summer there is no need for them to have the fucking heating ramped up to boiling on the buses.
there is something special about traveling by bus. you can see the world go by.
the last thing i want the bus to do is operate as a sauna.

so boris send that instruction out today. perhaps by the time the olympics roll around drivers will not be using the buses to boil passengers.

Sunday, August 01, 2010

unelected

david milliband has said that labour could face years in the political wilderness that is opposition.
i think he is just talking about the length of time it is taking them to elect a new leader (and then they have to elect a new shadow cabinet).
at this rate the next general election will be held by the time labour have settled on who is goign to lead them.

meanwhile the con/dems have gotten off to a sprint start. just a shame they have been rocking from side to side with poor form.