Coalition of All the Losers
Could we really have a coalition of all those who lost the last election?
Brown thinks so!
But would it last more than a few months? Clegg and Brown have big differences and will the British public stomach another unelected Prime Minister after Brown?
I don’t like it! And a lot of other people won’t either! And what if they bring through an anti-Tory voting system to keep power for the near to mid future?
We just have a lot of questions and no answers.
Prudence does Stupidity
We’ve all come out of disastrous meetings and thought about saying something derogatory about the person or persons we have just met. But we all know you might give a colleague a knowing look, that can’t be overseen, but you never say anything that might be overheard.
So when Gordon Brown accuses Gillan Duffy of being a bigot, he was being stupid. Not for saying what he said, but for saying it when he did. After all, he had been miked up by the media, so to forget that he was, perhaps showed that he is not the sharpest knife in the NuLabor box.
Well! Perhaps he might be, judging by the daft policies they keep trying to implement.
Bigot is perhaps a strong word to call Gillian Duffy, but then she may be typical of many who resent the number of East Europeans who have come to the UK in recent years.
But has it ever been thus?
I am descended from Jews on my father’s side and Huguenots on my mother’s. We absorbed a very large six figure number of Poles after the Second World War and countless immigrants from the Commonwealth since.
Some come, some go home, some settle and some move on.
Remember too, that some of the largest inflow in recent years to the UK have been from countries like France and Spain.
Do we complain about them?
An Undertaker’s Tea Party
The headline in The Times today compares Prudence’s launch of his campaign to an undertaker’s tea party.
It was a no-frills launch, positively Presbyterian in its austerity. Some said that Gordon Brown and his Cabinet looked just plain grim, like undertakers on a tea break. And it must be said, as they trooped out of the gleaming black door of No 10 at 10.48am, they did look as solemn as a sermon. The only thing sunny was above us, in the sky, on this lovely spring day that was troubled only by a soft breeze.
The launch cost nothing, a price Gordon can afford. The PM spoke through a mike hidden in the lapel of his Sunday best suit. His hair was (suitably) grey and newly cut, as perfect as a bowling lawn. The look of pure concentration on his face as he stood before us, the Cabinet fanned out on each side, looking like the Politburo but not as much fun, was that of a little boy desperately trying to remember his lines.
Certainly, he and his cabinet all look grim in the photo. But then the threat of redundancy affects people like that.
I do think though this article is rather a slur on undertakers. I met a quite few lately and I would never call them grim. Professional and serious, maybe, but then you would expect that.
Cabinet on the Road
Prudence likes to take the Cabinet on the road to have meetings in different places. But as this article in The Times states.
The Cabinet Office has gone out of its way to play down the cost of sending the Cabinet out of London even though mandarins originally opposed the concept. A parliamentary answer suggested that the first in September 2008, held in Birmingham where there are key marginal seats, cost £72,756.
But as with many things Prudence and NuLabor say, the devil is in the detail. And the figure above doesn’t include security by the local police. This was said about one visit to Leeds.
Only West Yorkshire Police has so far revealed the cost of a visit: £130,000 was spent on security at the Government’s second Cabinet meeting, held in Leeds in November 2008, trebling the cost from an initial £67,198 to £197,198. The Prime Minister’s eight Cabinet meetings have cost the taxpayer an average of £200,000.
I’m all for government learning more by visiting different places, but surely if they all decided to get on Eurostar to have a meeting in Paris and then left immediately afterwards for London, they would learn little about the French capital. It would always be better to hold the meeting at the most mutually convenient place and then visit where necessary afterwards.
It would also seem that Prudence and his cronies were economical with the truth.
Incompetent New Labour
In the report in The Times on Prudence’s Death Tax, there is an interesting comment.
Off topic I know, but I have got to point this out ,if only to show how utterly incompetent Labour are. Would you believe that Labour did not know that ALL of the Trademarks they hold for their name “Labour” “Labour Party” etc etc are ALL invalid. They only realised in November 2009 when they were told !!. They were granted one of the replacements 2 days ago and rest are still only applications. As I say, all the old ones are invalid because LABOUR did not know ,or care ?, that Unincorporated Associations cannot own any property including trademarks in the name of the Association. What incompetents Labour are.
Surely, if they can’t manage themselves, they can’t be competent to manage UK Plc.
Prudence’s Death Tax
According to The Times Prudence and his few supporters in Nulabor are possibly proposing a 10% death tax on all estates. Read some of the comments to the article
Now, I’m someone who has a bob or two and when I die I will pay substantial death duties. On the other hand, I would hopefully have sufficient money to make sure that I had enough nubile nurses to keep me happy in my last days. So just because I have saved, why should I pay for those who have not saved for their last days?
To actually suggest it is a crass idea and a vote loser. After all probably ninety percent of the population want to make enough money before they retire to really enjoy it.
But then what do you expect from a man who was a Chancellor, who had the same idea of taxes as the Sherriff of Nottingham?
It just shows how out of touch Nulabor is with everything.
Let’s take a couple of examples.
Suppose someone was dying in their thirties from some awful cancer. Because they have been ill for some time, they would probably not have any estate at all. Or perhaps just a small one. So the widow, who would be up shit-street anyway gets even more of her money taken away by a grasping government.
I also have two friends, who have very disabled children. Their care is expensive, so is it right that if the parents die, that disabled children are taxed, when they need the money. I suppose that their disabilities mean that they can’t vote, so it’s all right then!
Now we need to raise money for care of the elderly, but it would be better if we raised it say on energy taxes or VAT. Raising VAT to 20% would raise about £13billion, but I think that this may be a better alternative as Prudence’s lowering and raising of VAT didn’t seem to make much effect one way or the other.
We could also get rid of two unwanted aircraft carriers, the Joint Strike Fighter, Trident, tanks, identity cards and many other pet projects of Prudence and his cronies.
Gritting Priorities
It was interesting to hear on Radio 5 last night from Alistair Kight of GRITIT and the fact that people are stealing salt supplies. He was also very critical of local and national government, who only had very inadequate supplies and have thus added to the chaos.
He has a point.
Surely, we should have enough supplies to keep all the main and most of the secondary roads open for a month. Where I live I’ve never seen a gritter at all on the fairly steep up and down, that leads to the main road. Surely, it should have been done at least once, as the road leads to some elderly and seriously ill people.
But then we vote Conservative in this area, so there are no votes for Prudence in giving my council enough money to provide adequate services.
I was in London yesterday and they were gritting the paths of Regents Park.
Gritting in Regents Park
So at least we have our priorities right!
Politicians Have Little Effect
I found an article, by Matthew Paris in The Times on Saturday, entitled What have politicians done for them? Zilch.
He was referring to Malawi and Zimbabwe and it is a profound article by someone who writes with thought and also knows that part of Africa.
What with the farcical non-binding agreement at Copenhagen and Prudence’s efforts to try to help the economy, I would suspect that it doesn’t just apply to Africa.
The Anonymous Widower 