Saturday, 6 February 2010

The Stan Laurel And Oliver Hardy Of The Labour Party...

Douglas Alexander and Ed Miliband (it took two of them..?!) have a stirring ‘Vote Labour’ election advert in ‘CiF’:
The TV series Faking It made compelling viewing because people were trained for high-flying jobs and either got away with it or got rumbled. Anyone watching the shadow chancellor over the last week would recognise that sense of a contestant being found out.

His spending strategy is unravelling against the backdrop of a global consensus that we must sustain recovery, not undermine it.
There's a 'global consensus', then? Where was that announced?
The real question facing Britain is not how to nudge people but how to give them power over their own lives. The need for collective action is clear: from climate change to reforming social care, from improving education standards to tackling unemployment.
All things which this government has singularly failed to do over the last twelves years.

But if you vote for them this year, they promise to sort it out!
And it goes to the heart of why Conservatism is wrong for the next decade: the right kind of state action is not a drain on individual empowerment; it can enhance it.
There's been precious little enhancement from this government, though; section 44, the spread of CCTV, PCSOs, the widespread use of RIPA powers by local councils, etc, etc...
Osborne and the Conservatives are caught between the ideology that defines them and the real lessons from the financial crisis. In the face of massive market failure, they continue to assert that society's problems will be solved if we simply have a small state.
Whereas Dougie and Ed know that the real answer is a massive, unsustainable state!
The role and shape of the state will be central to the coming election campaign.

In its manifesto, Labour will offer itself as both the reformer and defender of progressive government.
I doubt anyone in this current government actually knows what 'progressive' means, much less believes they embody it...
We understand that the real task for government in the coming decade is to protect people from risk and enhance opportunity.
Problem being, boys, most of the risk actually comes from the state. And as for 'enhancing opportunity', well, yes, if you totally ignore the cost of that opportunity...

You aren't the solution; you're the problem.
And society can only be strengthened if we recognise the role for government in supporting families rather than leaving people to sink or swim.
Supporting them how?

Financially, with the massive and unsustainable welfare state? Or by undermining them at every possible opportunity, as you have with the secretive family courts?
Moreover, the chances of a young person from a low income family going to university have more than doubled under Labour.
Oh, well said! Great comedy timing!

Just as the government announce massive cutbacks in higher education, forcing universities and polytechnics to drop all the useless media studies and degrees in Klingon those young people on low incomes had been studying...
We know, too, that we need to be reformers of the state. As constituency MPs, we see people facing daily frustrations in their interactions with government: disempowered not empowered.
Heh. Good luck with that. Just yesterday, one of your own MPs was Tweeting his frustration with council demands and interference:

You can only imagine how much greater the influence of BigGov is resented by the long-suffering taxpayer...
That is why our manifesto will strengthen the power of people in their interaction with the state. Central to this are the guarantees we will make in our public services: to maximum waiting times for hospital treatment, the right to a good school for your child, one-to-one tuition if your child falls behind to responsive, neighbourhood policing. We also plan to extend direct payments in social care so that it becomes the norm for older people and their carers to decide for themselves what they need and how it should be provided.
Maybe my memory's playing tricks on me, but weren't all those election promises the last couple of times too?
We have made decisions on taxes, including at the top, to protect key public services at the same time as we make cuts elsewhere.
Translation: We'll threaten schoolsn'ospitals if you dare vote for the Tories, but cutting out the useless dead wood of diversity and multiculti initiatives, not a chance...
By contrast, the Conservatives are instead focused on undermining the gains of the last decade. Take Labour's three innovations in income, services and assets for children: tax credits, Sure Start, the child trust fund. The Tories have said that all would be subject to cutbacks, part of their belief in the residual welfare state.
'Nooo, don't vote Tory, vote Labour, for the chilllldreeeennnn!'
We will fight for our vision of society: enabling government, empowering people, a society where we grow together, not apart.
A society 'where we grow together, not apart'. The closing paragraph to an article released on the very same day four MPs were charged with fiddling expenses, while many, many more escaped justice by paying back money that won't even cover the cost of forcing them to do so...

Great timing, boys.

9 comments:

  1. I think you're being pretty harsh and Stan and Olly - after all they were funny and I could choose whether or not ot pay to see them.

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  2. I think they have so lost the plot they probably believe this.

    I work in IT. I shall often spend hours on a problem. But there comes a time to say, "It's buggered - get a new one".

    Oh and tax credits. Hell's teeth! Lets make HMRC even more opaque. There are black holes out there that let more light through.

    And the low income family students. Oh give me strength. Have those two comedians forgotten who introduced tuition fees?

    We were promised joined-up government by people who probably struggle with joined-up writing. Why else would a government make going to university more expensive whilst leaning on the universities to let in under-qualifed kids just because they are poor. Have you seen the drop-out rates? These kids are being shafted in the demented hope of New Lab that all must have degrees.

    And no it isn't just that they waste their time and the lecturers but they will rack-up big debts for the privilege of doing one year of crapology at the University of Shithampton.

    It's an utter betrayal. Those kids could have used that cash to buy their first car or something.

    I want Labour to be lose very badly. I want them to have nowt left but their eyes to weep with.

    Has iDave got the fire in his belly for it? No. If they'd got DD in or Billy Hague then... Maybe.

    Who do I vote for? I used to vote UKIP but since they've now gone Crazy Great Uncle who copped some shrapnel to the bonce at Arnhem I'm stuffed.

    I mean what the hell are they on about. Their big new policy is banning the burkha. Like that really matters when the country is so far in the hole the IMF are likely to come over and knee-cap us. It isn't even deck-chairs on the Titanic. UKIP are re-arranging the doilies on the Lusitania.

    There is LPUK but that's three blokes and a dog. The hell with it! I'm sending off my tenner and joining. That's four blokes a dog and I have a cat.

    I urge everyone else to do the same. There is no alternative. The Tories are like a rabbit in the headlights of Tony Blair. Yes, Blair's great legacy will perversely be how he reformed the Conservative Party. The LibDems are utterly rudderless under Cleggie who is less capable of achieving anything to the purpose than his namesake from Last of The Summer Wine. He couldn't even manage to arrange for Vince Cable to hurtle down a hill in Yorkshire in a bath tub. UKIP have re-branded as BNP-lite and the leasst said about Nick Griffin's gang and the Greens soonest mended.

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  3. Why not use a picture of Mandelson to illustrate this, as he has more than a passing resemblance to Stan Laurel?

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  4. NickM,

    I'm with you there; I'll make it five men, a dog, your cat and the two or three rats in my kitchen.

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  5. I don't want maximum waiting times for hospital appointments, I want quality treatment and a sensible GP if I have to be seen anytime during the 128 hours per week when my own GP is unavailable. (That's on the assumption my GP's surgery is open 40 hours a week.)

    Nick said 'And no it isn't just that they waste their time and the lecturers but they will rack-up big debts for the privilege of doing one year of crapology at the University of Shithampton.'

    Well said. The problem is the parents who think their children have done well because they receive a useless piece of paper...

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  6. I can't stand the pair of them Wee Dougie is like a small hamster, the front bench mascot, a nasty oily little Gollum type character.

    Ed Milliband - what a ***t!

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  7. Stan and Ollie - no way - those gentlemen were consumate professionals who delivered. Actually talented and yet modest.

    Dougie and Ed - best that can be said of them is that they are like persistent acne - just won't go away and somewhat disfiguring of the body politic.

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  8. "I think you're being pretty harsh and Stan and Olly - after all they were funny and I could choose whether or not ot pay to see them."

    Very true...

    "I think they have so lost the plot they probably believe this."

    I don't think they do. They aren't stupid, just venal.

    "Lets make HMRC even more opaque. "

    Having read this, I'm thinking we should scrap it and start over!

    "There is LPUK but that's three blokes and a dog. "

    It's three really clever blokes and a dog, though. And I won't have to hold my nose to put a cross in the box...

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  9. "The problem is the parents who think their children have done well because they receive a useless piece of paper..."

    I wonder sometimes if modern parents ever take a good, hard look at their children and really see them.

    Actually, I sometimes wonder if modern parents know why they had children at all!

    "Dougie and Ed - best that can be said of them is that they are like persistent acne - just won't go away and somewhat disfiguring of the body politic."

    There ought to be a cream we could buy for that...

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