Clegg, quoted on Sunday: ‘When I hear people from the Right say all the money should come from poor people . . . I’m saying no, hang on a minute, let’s make sure we do this as fairly as possible.’
What does this poltroon take us for? What, even, does he take his LibDem conference audience for? We all know that this is a bare-faced lie. He has never heard any such thing. No such people exist. He will claim it's all part of political rhetoric, etc, but it's no more than a completely crass and dishonest representation of 'people from the Right'.
He should be forced to apologise, first for blatant dishonesty, and secondly for his grotesque grammar: 'I'm saying'. You are a 45 year old Oxbridge educated man, for heaven's sake, not a teenager trying to sound like a Californian.
What a lightweight. Boris wrote yesterday saying we should save the Cleggster, if only because he delivered us from yet more of the Brown Terror. Clegg did no such thing; as Andrew Lansley admitted a fortnight ago (which some of us had been recommending two and a half years ago):
In normal circumstances, with that election result, there would not have been a coalition. We’d have formed a minority government, put forward a programme, challenged the House to support it or not and after a decent interview – probably a few months – we would have had a general election and would have almost certainly won a majority.
The reason this didn't happen is simple: Cameron's personal ambition, in inverse relationship to his courage.
Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Monday, 24 September 2012
On Thrasher, Limousines-for-Dictators, Saints and Army Veteran Status
Thrasher Mitchell should be sacked, obviously. He lied about swearing at the police officers and now, whilst denying using 'the words attributed' to him, hasn't told us exactly what he did say. The sin of a Cabinet Minister lying is far greater than the sin of being a short tempered arrogant little twat, and he should go.
Anyone who thinks he will be a loss to this government hasn't been paying attention for the past two years, during which time he has been spending £30m a day of taxpayers' money on fleets of Mercedes for dictators, shopping trips for their wives, and space programmes for India (OK, he will say that it was spent on clean water provision, but by doing so he freed up the cash for the Indian government to build spaceships and plan interplanetary fact-finding missions, etc). £500m a year goes to 'consultants' and £476m to 'climate change'. Oh, and £120m on 'administration' - ie salaries, pensions, offsite meetings, boondoggles, freebies and a little light expenses fraud - the usual stuff.
I think we have every right to suspect that they find it quite hard to spend all this money at all, let alone wisely. The major project for 2012/13 is £58m for the 'St Helena Access Project'. That's £13,631 per inhabitant ('saint') of St Helena for a new airport. Good luck to them, at least they are loyal subjects of Her Majesty. As for the rest, I'm with the gutsy Dambisa Moyo: "Limitless development assistance to African governments has fostered dependency, encouraged corruption and ultimately perpetuated poor governance and poverty."
As for the constant reference in the press to Thrasher's army officer past, this seems overstated. He was commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment in February 1975, but this commission was 'terminated' in October of the same year, when he appears to have joined the TA. He resigned his TA commission less than 18 months later, when an undergraduate at Cambridge. Frankly, I got more military experience in the Wellington College CCF between 1975 and 1979. Someone wrote a letter to the Telegraph this morning complaining that Mitchell was giving the armed forces a bad name. I really wouldn't worry - spending six months in the RTR as a 19 year old really doesn't count. For the first year of my own commission (as a 19 year old platoon commander on suntanning and cocktail party duty in Hong Kong, since you ask), I was a public liability. Thank heavens for my NCOs and good relations with the Chinese border guards.
Anyone who thinks he will be a loss to this government hasn't been paying attention for the past two years, during which time he has been spending £30m a day of taxpayers' money on fleets of Mercedes for dictators, shopping trips for their wives, and space programmes for India (OK, he will say that it was spent on clean water provision, but by doing so he freed up the cash for the Indian government to build spaceships and plan interplanetary fact-finding missions, etc). £500m a year goes to 'consultants' and £476m to 'climate change'. Oh, and £120m on 'administration' - ie salaries, pensions, offsite meetings, boondoggles, freebies and a little light expenses fraud - the usual stuff.
I think we have every right to suspect that they find it quite hard to spend all this money at all, let alone wisely. The major project for 2012/13 is £58m for the 'St Helena Access Project'. That's £13,631 per inhabitant ('saint') of St Helena for a new airport. Good luck to them, at least they are loyal subjects of Her Majesty. As for the rest, I'm with the gutsy Dambisa Moyo: "Limitless development assistance to African governments has fostered dependency, encouraged corruption and ultimately perpetuated poor governance and poverty."
As for the constant reference in the press to Thrasher's army officer past, this seems overstated. He was commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment in February 1975, but this commission was 'terminated' in October of the same year, when he appears to have joined the TA. He resigned his TA commission less than 18 months later, when an undergraduate at Cambridge. Frankly, I got more military experience in the Wellington College CCF between 1975 and 1979. Someone wrote a letter to the Telegraph this morning complaining that Mitchell was giving the armed forces a bad name. I really wouldn't worry - spending six months in the RTR as a 19 year old really doesn't count. For the first year of my own commission (as a 19 year old platoon commander on suntanning and cocktail party duty in Hong Kong, since you ask), I was a public liability. Thank heavens for my NCOs and good relations with the Chinese border guards.
Monday, 17 September 2012
Open Goal Missed
How anal does one have to be to look at the British Social Attitudes Survey (just published), having heard about it on the radio whilst shaving at dawn? Very, you might say. Well, Idle has done it so that you don't have to.
The good news, as long as you are not an illegal immigrant dishonestly claiming that your life is threatened by deportation, is that the country is good and fed up with the whole immigration racket - 75% say that it should be reduced (51% say by 'a lot'), though judging by the last couple of years there's a fat chance of that happening.
On the West Lothian question, 65% of people think that Scottish MPs should have no vote on matters affecting only England and Wales. This seems blindingly obvious, and the natural counterbalance to the establishment of the pretendy-wee-parliament in Edinburgh, with its devolved powers. So why hasn't this government dealt with it? It needn't be a complicated or contentious bill, and was not linked to Clegg's abortion of a Lords reform bill, thankfully now as dead a duck that ever quacked no more.
One thing really stands out, though, and reminds us of just how huge, how gaping, how bleeding unmissable the open goal of 2010 was for Cameron. Not only was he up against the most unattractive and disgusting of opponents in Brown, not only had Brown proved dishonest and useless as Prime Minister, not only was Brown ranting at his own natural supporters (Duffy the 'bigot'), but British attitudes to public spending were overwhelmingly in Cameron's favour:
For the first time since 1983, less than a third of the electorate supported increased spending year-on-year. Furthermore, this had been an established trend since before the last Labour Parliament of 2005-2010. So why on earth did Cameron and Osbourne cop out quite so spinelessly in 2006/7 with their decision to support Brown's 2008-2011 spending plans? Why the whole 'sharing the proceeds of growth' fiasco?
This seems to me to be the most important element of the charge sheet against Cameron and his lieutenant. Cameron lacked the instinct and courage to oppose as a Conservative, and Osbourne (so often referred to as a clever political strategist) produced a dripping-wet electoral campaign strategy.
Well, you useless cretins, the graph has turned; expect the next election to be a tougher environment, with less public goodwill towards the cause of a balanced budget and reduction in our massive debt.
You blew it, boys.
The good news, as long as you are not an illegal immigrant dishonestly claiming that your life is threatened by deportation, is that the country is good and fed up with the whole immigration racket - 75% say that it should be reduced (51% say by 'a lot'), though judging by the last couple of years there's a fat chance of that happening.
On the West Lothian question, 65% of people think that Scottish MPs should have no vote on matters affecting only England and Wales. This seems blindingly obvious, and the natural counterbalance to the establishment of the pretendy-wee-parliament in Edinburgh, with its devolved powers. So why hasn't this government dealt with it? It needn't be a complicated or contentious bill, and was not linked to Clegg's abortion of a Lords reform bill, thankfully now as dead a duck that ever quacked no more.
One thing really stands out, though, and reminds us of just how huge, how gaping, how bleeding unmissable the open goal of 2010 was for Cameron. Not only was he up against the most unattractive and disgusting of opponents in Brown, not only had Brown proved dishonest and useless as Prime Minister, not only was Brown ranting at his own natural supporters (Duffy the 'bigot'), but British attitudes to public spending were overwhelmingly in Cameron's favour:
For the first time since 1983, less than a third of the electorate supported increased spending year-on-year. Furthermore, this had been an established trend since before the last Labour Parliament of 2005-2010. So why on earth did Cameron and Osbourne cop out quite so spinelessly in 2006/7 with their decision to support Brown's 2008-2011 spending plans? Why the whole 'sharing the proceeds of growth' fiasco?
This seems to me to be the most important element of the charge sheet against Cameron and his lieutenant. Cameron lacked the instinct and courage to oppose as a Conservative, and Osbourne (so often referred to as a clever political strategist) produced a dripping-wet electoral campaign strategy.
Well, you useless cretins, the graph has turned; expect the next election to be a tougher environment, with less public goodwill towards the cause of a balanced budget and reduction in our massive debt.
You blew it, boys.
Friday, 31 August 2012
Poetry Corner
It happened, yesterday, that a friend and I took to swapping poetic ditties, such was the slow pace of the banking and commercial worlds, it still being August and the terrors not yet back at their prep and public schools.
I started with a paraphrasing of Belloc's wonderful Lord Lundy:
The grandees of the Party bore
The shame till they could bear no more.
They rallied their collective powers,
Summoned Dave to Millbank Tower,
And bitterly addressed him thus—
“Sir! you have disappointed us!
We had imagined you to be
Prime Ministerial pedigree.
The stocks have crashed; the Press turned sceptic,
The Middle Class is apoplectic
So there it is! . . . Our language fails!
Go and run the Royal Mint in Wales!”
My correspondent, who I will call Felipe, responded thus:
There was a boy whose name was Davy,
His cheek was pink, his hair was wavy,
And unlike all the other boys,
He didn’t much care for games and toys,
But dwelt all day on his ambition,
To be a famous politician.
To Eton and Oxford, up he went,
The perfect launch for his ascent,
To the upper reaches of our polity,
And the friendship of the quality,
So with a little help from friends and dad,
He quickly made himself a SPAD.
But he must get a job, and it must take in
Experience in the art of spin
So for seven long years of toil unseen
He spun the web for Michael Green,
Which was somewhat infra dig, in truth
For a patrician and a gilded youth.
At length, at last, his climb resumed
When, as his friends had all assumed,
He was given a seat and duly sent
To sit in Her Majesty’s parliament.
‘Now to be leader’ he said and turned his eyes
To the summit, the peak, the glittering prize.
The battle was joined, his weapon was spin,
He used it to do his opponents in;
The fools had relied on the unvarnished truth
Dave on his tongue and his charm and his youth.
The blue rinses loved him as he told them he’d win,
And the elders themselves succumbed to his spin.
But at the election the House was hung,
Had Dave’s ambition missed the last rung?
No, never, he had one more trick:
A big open offer to someone called Nick.
They carved up the jobs and then, and then,
Dave could walk straight into old number ten.
He had the top job, now what would he do?
As it turned out he hadn’t a clue
I’ve got there he thought, what more do I know?
If I had some ideas you’d have heard them by now.
I know that I’m happily married to Sam
But I’ve never really known who I am.
I think this should now be an open competition. Do your best, idle readers, try to get that old muse working and amuse yourselves and the rest of us with poetic reflections of the state we're in. The prize, as usual, will be won by Nick Drew.
Wednesday, 29 August 2012
Leaving Strauss
Andrew Strauss was one of the best captains in modern cricket. He inherited a shambles, led from the front, never took individual glory, was undeniably successful and was a good sport. He is clearly intelligent and had a great partnership with Flower, the coach. In the field, he was a bit cautious for my taste, but his record was overwhelmingly a winning one, most importantly against the Australians.
So let's hear it for a natural leader from a public school! We're hardly going to go hoarse cheering Cameron, so three cheers for Strauss! They say he has a career in politics in mind (Guido even has him down for Corby), but I say give him time. As long as he promises not to wear his wedding ring on a necklace any more, but keep it firmly on his finger. It would help if his voice broke a bit, and if he avoided estuarial sporting cliches. But these are quibbles; he has a 2.1 in economics from Durham and is not ashamed to be a Conservative.
Sign him up!
Friday, 24 August 2012
Harry...... Remember George
Harry on the lash reminds me of the most famous story about George Best: the 5* hotel waiter, entering George's suite, and seeing George, the reigning Miss World and thousands of pounds of casino winnings, all tastefully arranged on a huge bed, simply asked: "George, where did it all go wrong?"
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Idle at the Games
Crikey that was exciting. In the presence of greatness, from the stands (Bolt and Blake; that incredible Masai 800m runner, David Rudisha), and shaking hands face to face (Sir Christopher Hoy, no less). In an Olympic Park which, though teeming with people of all nationalities, speaking in tongues and thronging, felt open and airy and well designed, with the best landscape gardening you'll ever see at a major stadium complex. It was wonderful, and if I might have been pouring a bit of cold water on the event in the lead-up years, I take it all back. Coe played a blinder and deserves his barony now, though he didn't before.
It helps if you are well quartered for these events; this is no time to be dossing down in the St Pancras YMCA or a single-star fleapit in Paddington. Our clubhouse for the event was a decent enough hotel on Trafalgar Square, made delightful by a brilliant rooftop bar, where (thank you, the meteorological fates), we drank to the early hours whilst being able to smoke like chimneys, in shirtsleeves and with a happy and well-lubricated group of clients. Corporate entertainment can be a frightful bore, but this was terrific. Lady Idle's happy snaps follow:
It helps if you are well quartered for these events; this is no time to be dossing down in the St Pancras YMCA or a single-star fleapit in Paddington. Our clubhouse for the event was a decent enough hotel on Trafalgar Square, made delightful by a brilliant rooftop bar, where (thank you, the meteorological fates), we drank to the early hours whilst being able to smoke like chimneys, in shirtsleeves and with a happy and well-lubricated group of clients. Corporate entertainment can be a frightful bore, but this was terrific. Lady Idle's happy snaps follow:
Meeting the great man.....
.... smiling to Lady Idle's camera
The great cauldron
View from the hotel bar
The Admiral in his party hat
Wild flowers beside the Olympic Park walkways
Gloriana, berthed in the Olympic Park
Idle, too fat for competition, but comfortable for spectatating
Inside the bowl
The Bolt, seconds after another sprint gold
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
