Now that Cherie is shamlessly doing lecture
tours, how about we have a whip round, and hire her to speak to New Labour
Scandals.
A few ideas for question.
1. Does your husband tell you
as many porkies as he does us? 2. Is it appropiate for the PM's wife to use
her position to enrich herself? 3. Can she think of another PM who became
several million pounds richer whilst in office? 4. If we buy you a one-way
ticket to Basra, will you take it?
I'll put a tenner into the kitty. When
we have fifty quid, we'll see if we can make a booking.
Maybe I've got this democracy business muddled
up, but didn't we just have a general election. Now, the Government is planning
a radical new policy, getting rid of fuel duty, and introducing road pricing
instead.
There are arguments to be made for this (weak, but arguments all
the same). But couldn't they have at least mentioned it last month, and allowed
people to vote on it at the polls.
Or maybe that isn't how New Labour
thinks things should work.
To first-quarter growth figures were revised down today to
just 0.5%, suggesting that Greatest Chancellor Of All Time (henceforth known as
GCOAT, or Billy for short) won't meet his growth forecast for this year.
But more interesting was the breakdown of those
figures. The only sector of the economy showing any significant growth was
government spending, with a rise of 0.7%.
The real economy gets smaller, while the
government keeps getting bigger. Even Billy will have trouble keeping that
going. Soon there won't be anyone left to tax.
The Queen's Speech included a new law on speeding.
To quote the Department of Transport, because "there are many more speeding
offences being detected", the government "feels it is appropriate that the
penalty point system is altered so that punishment takes a better account of the
level of offending." In effect, they'll still fine you, but they won't take so
many points off your license.
But, hold on. If speeding is as dangerous as they
say, shouldn't those drivers be banned?
The trouble is, when you ban them, they don't speed any more,
and you can't issue any more tickets. So the answer is simple, just keep on
issuing the speeding tickets, but not the penalty points. That way they can keep
whizzing along the roads…and pay money to the Government.
Unemployment has now risen for three months in a row - this
month it rose by 8,100. Modest, true, but then most trends start modestly. Don't
expect it to stop climbing anytime soon. In the
UK, 16% of all
jobs are in retail. And, in case you hadn't noticed, the retailers have all be
announcing terrible figures. When the tills are empty, you don't need so many
people behind them.
At this rate, even the Poles will be going home
soon.
The money is fast running out. What will the
greatest Chancellor of all time do then?
All those people who decided to 'hold their noses' and vote
for Tony one more time are must be feeling a bit queasy after seeing what's in
the Queen's Speech. ID Cards and draconian anti-terror legislation mean what few
civil liberties remain will be ended: schools will plunged into chaos with
private firms bought into run them: incapacity benefit will be attacked.
The left will be mortified - although that serves
them right for being fooled into voting for him on the basis that Gordon Brown
would be PM by last Monday. The right, meanwhile, will have to live with New
Labour stealing much of their rhetoric, whilst completely messing up the
implementation, so destroying the chance for genuine reform.
As usual, Blair manages to let everyone down.
And I haven't even got to the proposed new law on
speed cameras yet. Don't get me started….
