A Villainous Woman

Yes, she may look like a harmless little red squirrel or chipmunk, with her wide, innocent Bambi eyes, fragrant teeth and glossed lips. But take it from me, she's a wrong'un; an ocean-going, copper-bottomed, weapons-grade villain.

Her company, A4e -"a social purpose company with the sole aim to improve people's lives around the world" - (pass the sick-bag, please), turns over the thick end of £200m, ALL OF IT government contracts. That's you and me, idle blog readers.

We are mugs. Mugs! Because guess what the sweet-looking Emma Harrison is doing with the wonga? I'll tell you what: she's producing a dividend of £11m for her board, of which doe-eyed Emmykins takes £9.5m.

The cross-party group of MPs (yes, I know, hardly beacons of competence and integrity themselves) have described the performance of her company on these contracts as 'abysmal'. Will the contracts be withdrawn? I think we know the answer. There will be hand-wringing and obfuscation, lies and excuses. And the same contracts will be awarded again, with assurances that A4e's performance will be scrutinised more closely, yadda yadda.

Meanwhile, that poor blameless bastard Stephen Hester has not been allowed to take his bonus in shares, tied up for years and directly dependent upon his company's shareprice, because those slimeball politicians have given in to ignorant populism and ganged up on him because he's a banker. He is deemed to be doing a pretty good job, by the way. He was asked to go in and sort out Mr Fred Goodwin's mess. He didn't cause it. He wasn't even in the banking industry in the last few years before the bubble burst.

Hester can't get his highly conditional £1m bonus, with all its strings attached, despite his good hard work. This ginger witch, however, has just pocketed ten times that amount, ALL OF IT TAXPAYERS MONEY, despite being incompetent.

What does the coalition DO all day? The low-hanging fruit of usless spending that they could eradicate without a squeak of justifiable protest is there for all of us to see. Have they got rid of any of those gissajob Quangos? Have they hell.

This government may be slightly better than the Brown Terror that preceded it. But it is the most disappointing government of my lifetime. Given a golden ticket by the electorate to get a grip on things, with the polls still in their favour (astonishing, but that's the Ed Miliband effect for you), they arse about like the PG Tips chimps trying to move that upright piano and make a predictable bloody mess of it. With the exception of Gove and Duncan Smith, they deserve our contempt.