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Archive for April, 2009

I suppose I should subtitle this: “Gordon Falls into his own Elephant Trap”. The story of a Government defeat in the Commons yesterday over the status of former pre-1997 Gurkha soldier’s rights to settle in the UK is an interesting lesson to all politicians. In a way I suppose it is similar to the old saying of actors about never working with animals and children, they will always upstage you !

It was though a total and utter disaster for Gordon Brown and just incredible that he didn’t see it coming and was even stupid enough to get in a slanging match with Nick Clegg that he lost at Prime Minister’s Questions, only Brown could make Clegg look so good !

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Yesterday on my ride by the River Brue, I took these pictures that I thought I might share. To me the perfect conditions: Big sky, clouds and blue, high tide and still water, a sheer joy to be there and drink it all in.

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Michael Lea, who has resigned as Daily Mail political correspondent to take on a new role as chief writer to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. We must grant Michael Lea some leeway over this, we have all made similar mistakes, I did too I married mine. Perhaps he was driven by a failed and nostalgic view that he never saw active service, “Men abed in England will feel their manhood…” well enough of that sort of thing – will make you blind.

Perhaps the lust for a front line job complete with flying Nokias, staplers and the odd laser printer… a total mid life crisis in the making and the doing. Whilst Gordon is a “challenge” for a gifted writer, I think he is totally unworkable, writing for a Chimp would be easier.

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The main problem with all this lies in the type of justification given for it, “To prevent terrorist outrages” which could as equally apply to sanctioning the use of torture. I do not think that the Government, Police or Security Services are “evil” but they are all clearly incompetent as the Bob Quick incident at the time he was in charge of the Anti-terror Unit demonstrated.

There is a complete lack of basic “awareness” which is frightening as for example Heather Blears doing exactly the same thing as Quick, a week later. To be fair to the Midlands Dwarf, she did at least show some humility over it and in her case it wasn’t a security issue but as a Member of the Cabinet – she still did it !

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There are rumours coming from the Cabinet that a majority of them want to scrap the ID Card Scheme as doing so would save money and they have finally realised that the public – ie. the voters, have turned against it.

Personally and as Gordon Brown believes that stubbornness equals strength plus the Tories have already said that they will scrap it if elected, Brown won’t on principle. Blair wanted to join the Euro, Brown invented rules but truthfully, if Blair wanted it…it would never happen so, Cameron will scrap ID Cards…Brown will defend them to the grave.

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The knee jerk reaction of Labour to produce mountains of ill considered legislation is unabated by the shameful mess they have left the UKs finances in. Do we get an apology, some attempt at displaying a degree of humility ?

Not on your life, all we get is possibly the most arrogant and thick skinned MP in Westminster producing yet even more red tape to strangle the very businesses that we need to get us out of recession. Her latest foray is to force firms of 250 employees or more to publish equal pay lists but this appears to be a document telling businesses to be nice and if they don’t, legislation will follow in 2013…

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Someone writing in to the Independent wrote a “defence of Gordon Brown”. Now they may well have been a Labour ‘Troll’ but if so, an intelligent one in the way they laid their case out. On balance I suspect that they were a ‘Troll’ simply because they put forward the view that Gordon had a future and will likely surprise us all which, unless he resigns spontaneously which would be a surprise, is highly unlikely.

Although not even slightly “linguistic” and I cannot remember the expression, in French there is a phrase that literally translated means “Magic Moment” but in reality, means more than that, it means a suspension of (physical) belief and the acceptence however fleeting, of a magical moment but as we are talking about Gordon Brown, none I am sure applies… However and as this came from the Independent, I thought a ‘gentle reply’ might be more appropriate…

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Although it was writing in to the Telegraph that first got me interested in blogging unfortunately the DT has got boring as they have changed their format so that people like me are banished to the outer fringes and no longer ‘allowed’ to comment on main articles. However competition is a wonderful thing and I came across the Independent who does what the DT used to do but rather better and in a rather better way.

I have always used the on-line papers to provide stimulus for my own scribbles and because people don’t always agree with you, they prod you into thinking, justifying or simply changing your view anyway. On the Independent today, I was prompted to think about our two party system…

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Vince Cable wrote an interesting article in Friday’s Independent, the most interesting part of it was the last paragraph:

“Unless he (Cameron), tells us what the Tories would cut he is no more credible than the government front bench. Labour seem to have given up – so now it’s up to the Liberal Democrats to take on the Tories and expose their subterfuge.”

However laid bare, is the fundamental flaw and fantasy at the heart of the Libdems that has been there for as long as I can remember and when they were called the Liberal Party, they just don’t cut the mustard and don’t have broad voter appeal.

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I was torn between calling this essay, “Buddy can you spare a dime ?” and “Move Over Darling” but decided against both because they were far too light hearted. Following today’s blatantly political “do nothing Budget”, the situation is far more serious, things have got worse.

Like most political lobby journalists who get too close to their “prey”, I have little time for Nick Robinson of the BBC but to be fair he made a very good point today. He called this an historic Budget because of the circumstances but, if Darling’s rather optimistic growth assumptions don’t materialise, the next Budget will be truly Historic !

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