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Archive for June, 2009

Today we finally saw the start of the campaign for a General Election and it started with a big goof by Andrew Lansley the Conservative Shadow Health Minister in a radio interview where he stated that in order to protect health spending beyond 2011, all the other spending Departments would have to face cuts of 10%

Lansley may well have goofed but even so, it is time some reality started to bite so, a fortuitous foot in gob, as it were. Brown can prattle on as much as he likes but, he has put himself in a very difficult position because “Labour Investment” turns out to be “Tory Cuts” by another name.

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Let me start by saying that I have every sympathy for any journalist trying to write something interesting about British politics this day, what can one say ? The Independent Leader showed how not to do it as the excerpt below shows:

“Even the UK Independence Party, seen as a great victor on Sunday night, actually saw its share of the vote rise by only 0.3 percentage points. In terms of share of the vote, the Conservatives gained only 1 percentage point, while the Liberal Democrats lost 1.2. The Greens did best, gaining 2.4 percentage points, but that did not translate into more seats in the European Parliament, whereas Ukip’s higher vote did.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-an-electoral-debacle-that-might-save-gordon-brown-1700200.html

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Maybe its just me but the thing that has really winds me up is the things these Labour politicians say, they are on a totally different planet to you and I and likely a different time zone too.

Gordon Brown when the economy had hit the buffers at full pelt, to every question asked replied: “I’m doing what the British people want me to do and am getting on with the job.” Well apart from him getting on with the job just made matters worse, what British person did he approach that told him they wanted him to do that ?

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I always browse through the broadsheets most mornings, grazing on this article/writer or that if only because professional journalists as they twist and turn each day in a struggle to get a new angle on the “current running story”, interesting even when they get it wrong as in this rather tasteless example :- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/04/gordon-brown-purnell-polly-toynbee

But this morning in the Independent Stephen Foley an American writer wrote a thought provoking piece which whilst I totally disagreed with every word, did set me off on taking a different view of Gordon Brown. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/stephen-foley-ditching-brown-looks-crazy-from-here-1697248.html

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Today in the main Leader in the Independent, they decided to extol the virtues of the Liberal Democratic Party as the only one who could be trusted over the EU. It was both a sad and pathetic statement, on a par with Gordon Brown’s “Getting on with the job…” statements. Just how disconnected from reality can the Fleet St.  “chattering classes” become one asks ?

‘Only the Liberal Democrats have consistently put the case for Europe…’ Would be a great statement if even remotely true which it is not. What persuasive case has Clegg and his minions presented to the British electorate on the EU ? What personal benefits or even national benefits have been presented to us by them ? The answer is none at all and likely because there are none, the EU is just another Magic Suit of Clothes.

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So today is the Local Elections in some areas and certainly where I live plus the European Elections for MEPs, of these two elections, the least significant is the latter and it will be interesting to see whether there is a difference in turnout between those areas with both elections and those with just the European one.

In theory the European elections should be the most important but in the UK as in many other countries they are not and most likely because the European Parliament is totally the wrong format for elected representatives of EU citizens to control the EU Executive.

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