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Tuesday 14 April 2015

Blog 131. Cameron promises blood...


Yes – the blood of a unicorn foal for breakfast, for everyone over the age of 63 ¾ born in a crop circle on a Wednesday.

Miliband pledges to make a job for everyone under 35 with his toenail clippings and Miriam promises to show us how to sauté Nick’s cojones.

If you wondered why the electoral promises are sliding off political tongues like manure off a hot shovel or a bad production of Romeo and Juliet - it’s the coalition stupid.

Clegg proved (see last week’s blog) that faced with the possibility of government without a majority you can say whatever you bloody well like. Even the most clear and obvious statements of political commitment can be ditched later on the basis that you want to be in power.

Simple.

So Cameron attempted to top trump the others by claiming everyone would be allowed 3 days off a year to volunteer – contributing to his BIG SOCIETY. BS(!) is a Tory marketing term thrown out to counteract Maggie’s curse that there’s no such thing as society (for you younger bleaders) which was tantamount to claiming that human beings have no humanity.

Having not switched off the radio quickly enough I heard a bit of the blather on Question Time. The Tory wheeled out to defend this ridiculous notion claimed that people would feel better about themselves and the cost of – for example – losing a million working days, from nurses alone, in the NHS would be balanced by less sick leave. SERIOUSLY that was what was said. They would feel better about themselves because they would be contributing to society and helping people. Most of us think that is what nurses are supposed to do within hard-pressed hospitals anyway. Maybe they spend their shifts playing roulette and no one told us.

I half expect to turn on the radio and find that Cameron has promised to paint the sky turquoise every other Sunday and Miliband is going to make manna blow in from the sea. Clegg is going to make the birds sing at precisely 7am every morning but just at a level to sooth you and not so loud as to wake you up if you are having a lie in.

Politics was never a straightforward business but the smoke and mirrors are working overtime in the absence of anyone with a spine.

Osborne’s fatuous claim that we are doing great and are better off yada yada yada – just doesn't equate with the world most of us live in. I can, for example, count a handful of close acquaintances (and I really don’t know that many people and don’t do any modern social media) who have had to apply for their OWN JOBS at least three times in the last 5 years. They are made to feel ‘lucky’ to still have a job albeit with more responsibility for less pay.

Recently it was revealed that a significant proportion of supermarket workers have to claim benefits to live. So all that cheap produce that makes us feel we’re managing is actually being subsidised by the tax payer. You may be able to get a pint of milk for less than a bottle of water but it is being paid for elsewhere.

Bankers et al, who wrecked the economy, quietly re-grouped having never been punished for putting us all in the mire. Meanwhile, the acid clamour against immigrants and benefit claimants gets louder and more entrenched. Challenges are not made where they ought to be (blog111.)

It’s the conjurers, con-men and cojone exhibitors who have us by the short and curlies.