Category Archives: Politics

They STILL don’t get it – Part The Second …

Where were you on 31 March 1990? There’s a good chance that at least one of you was in Trafalgar Square protesting about the Poll Tax – a demonstration that turned rather icky.

Yesterday’s demo in London saw 50,000 students marching against the increase in tuition fees – that screeching handbrake turn that will haunt Nick Clegg for ever. It’s quite right that they should demonstrate. University education benefits everyone and slapping the cost up will, despite Cleggy’s sugary words, inevitably and inexorably restrict it to the sprogs of the better off. (What do you want to be when you leave Eton and Oxbridge, son? Chairman of the BBC or Prime Minister.)

What is sad about yesterday is that, also it seems inevitably and inexorably, it turned into a smash-fest at Millbank Tower. (I digress momentarily to suggest that, as this is one of the ugliest buildings in London, was Cameron’s campaign HQ and had previously housed the egregious Mandelson, it should be bulldozed forthwith and the site ploughed with salt.)

No. What is REALLY sad is that the violence and thuggery lets the Boy David off the hook. He managed to take five minutes out from his first big international freebie to talk about it and he can concentrate on the broken glass and the spray tagging rather than why so many people are so dreadfully pissed off with his policy. (I discount Cleggy at this point – that back-flipping little runt has gone feral.) Even Baroness Warsi – the Dolores Umbridge of modern politics – jumped on the wizard night bus and went straight for the platitude potion.

We are, at least, back in the pattern. Tory government = riots in the streets.

This is not the first and it will not be the last.

You have been warned.

They STILL don’t get it – Part The First …

Old woolly Woolas the ex-Immigration Minister and, if the Courts have their way, soon to be ex-MP seems to have learnt very little from the beating Parliament has taken over the last couple of years.

For those that don’t live here or have been asleep since May, Woolly has been found guilty by an Election Court of telling lies about his opponent. Now, whatever we may think, or know, about politicians telling lies, it is an offence under the Representation of the People Act to gob out a load of porkies about your opponent during an election campaign. I, as a veteran of many election campaigns, know that. Woolly knew that before he sanctioned his rather unfortunate publications. (Besides, ignorance of the law has never really been an acceptable defence.)

Being weird, I’ve actually read the judgement of the Election Court which annexed the offending leaflets. I’ve seen them and, again as an election veteran, I can tell you that they go way beyond anything I would ever have allowed, designed, printed, published or distributed. Attack the policy by all means – even have a go at the guy’s record – but personal attacks of the kind Woolly was up to are a no-no – particularly when the allegations aren’t damned well true!

Does this odious moron know anything about morality? It seems morality got sent off on a three week bender because the Party was marginally less popular than a dose of the clap and Woolly faced losing his ticket on the Westminster gravy train.

What is all the more depressing is the calibre of support he’s getting from various corners. Labour MP Graham Stringer is quoted as saying that election battles in marginal seats were not “Sunday-school outings“. He went on “If the courts get involved in elections when people go over the top on policy and sometimes tell lies then we are going to have a very strange electoral process in future.”

Yes, Graham, it might encourage some of you sleazy buggers to clean up your act.

Milking Milton

The Spanish philosopher Geroge Santayana once wrote “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

You would think that any reasonably sentient Tory politician would remember Thatcher the Snatcher and her infamous cost-cutting exercises when she was at MiniED. Not so La Milton, the tatty-haired MP for Guildford, who recently advised my GP to call me a fatty.

Her latest foray was to propose the scrapping of free school milk for under fives. Now, my recollection of free school milk, drunk by a straw from a third pint bottle that had stood in the corner of a hot classroom all morning, is pretty revolting, so some of the little ankle-biters might not be too upset.

However, I digress, and that’s not the point – which is that we have now had two fairly major wrong-footers from the Cuckfield-Cockupartist in as many weeks. At least Cameron has some appreciation of history and slapped her down as soon as he got wind of it.

The question is “Do we have another Edwina-Bloody-Currie on our hands”?

The REAL outrage …

Whatever the final result – and at this time of the morning it’s still unclear who will end up in Number 10 – there are real issues coming out of this election.

First is a sense of real joy that the repugnant views of the BNP have been so roundly rejected. The result in Barking and Dagenham was a high spot of the night where Margaret Hodge (for whom I don’t have that much time) humiliated Nick Griffin (for whom I have absolutely none).

Second is the “locking out” of voters. No! We don’t need an enquiry into this and it isn’t down to massive failures of the process and it isn’t undemocratic. All those people who turned up late in the evening? You could have got a postal vote – it’s only a tick on a form! The polling stations were open for fifteen hours! Get your lives together and stop blaming others for your own failures.

Most important, though, is the state of our electoral system. Continue reading The REAL outrage …

Before you vote tomorrow …

… remember a few things.

Remember the Winter of Discontent, the Three Day Week and the Miners’ Strike. Remember the Poll Tax, the banking failure and the inner city riots.

Remember that since the Second World War we have seesawed between two political forces who only have their own vested interests at heart – who shout and scream at each other like playground bullies – who mislead and dissemble purely to make us believe that they have a monopoly on truth and wisdom – that only THEY can deliver us from evil into the kingdom that runs with milk and honey. THEY will then throw all their promises out of the window and spend the next five years exercising absolute power.

Remember that, for sixty-five long and tortuous years, this model has NOT WORKED.

Remember that the two main parties will try to frighten you into believing that the sky will split asunder and rain blood unless there’s a decisive victory for THEM.

Tomorrow, I beg you, think for a moment and then vote tactically for a hung parliament.

Maybe only then will THEY stop lobbing brickbats at each other and start talking about the problems that WE need to be solved.

The “Third” Party

Our electoral system has always been something of a sick joke. First past the post rarely, if ever, produces anything apart from government by the largest minority – sometimes not even that. And that’s the way the Labservatives like it.

They’re quite happy to have a two-horse system whereby we switch and swap every decade or so. They’re quite happy to have absolute power, with its concomitant corruption. They don’t want anyone else jumping on the seesaw and disturbing their little game. Meanwhile, like piggy in the middle, we listen to their empty promises, their weasel words and we suffer their excesses.

The great stumbling block to the leaders’ debates in the past has always been whether or not the “third” party leader should be included. The fallout from Thursday shows just why the Labservatives have always run scared of giving the “third man” an equal footing. Continue reading The “Third” Party

Oh – Woot, Yay!

The first real bribe of the election campaign has been announced.

To the accompaniment of fanfares and hurrahs the boy David and his pre-pubescent would-be Chancellor (Baby George) have unveiled their plan to support marriage through a “tax break”. (It also, apparently, applies to we partnered poofs!).

We’re in line for £150 a year – or £2.88 per week – but ONLY where one partner does not use their full personal allowance, i.e. earns less than £6,475 per year.

Ooo – quick, I’m off to write my resignation and apply for a part time job at Lidl.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has said “The incentives to marry – or not to divorce – provided by a policy whose maximum benefit is £150 a year must surely be weak relative to the other costs and benefits involved”. I’d go further and say “It’s pants”!

Conservative sources have said that “the tax break was designed to be a symbol and message – in other words a gesture. There are a few of them I’d like to make in your direction, lads, if that’s the best you can come up with!

And … They’re Off … … …

Today the worst kept secret for many a year in British politics was finally out. No prizes for guessing this late in the day as government ministers have been dropping May the 6th since before Christmas!

This is now the fourteenth general election since I was born. Obviously, I was a bit young to appreciate Wilson’s landslide in 1966, but I’ve been following the damned things since 1970. I used to find the general election fascinating, but I’m now struck by an immense feeling of “here we bloody go again”!

Watch out people.

We’re now in for four weeks of saturation coverage, where even the suited and booted party leaders’ very bowel movements will be subject to in-depth analysis by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight.

We’ll have four weeks of empty promises – Continue reading And … They’re Off … … …