Crap: A Guide to Politics - The Blog

Assorted Crap snippets from our PM, talking to The Times (reported 13th December 07)

First off come his sports credentials:

Mr Brown also had advice for Fabio Capello, the favourite to become the England  football manager.  “He’s got to train up the young players.  Do what we’re  doing”, he said in reference to younger members of his Cabinet and  Government….

We’ll call this Cheeky, Flash Gordon.  If the footy team follow you, the goalie one week will be the centre forward next, and so on for the lot of them, with the odd night of the long knives in which half the team is kicked into touch and replaced by a new lot of sycophants.  Football is not musical chairs, Gordo.  Free kick.

Next up is the pols’ stock-in-trade, Misleading Crap, this time re Northern Rock:

“There are bids of the table.  The one thing you are pretty clear about is that the  depositors have been protected and mortgage holders are in a proper position.   Whatever else, nobody has lost their money”

Nobody, Gordo?  Nobody?  How about taxpayers, present and future, I’d say to the tune of at least £25 billions.  (See the excellent Mike Denham on this site on 19th November “Subordinate Taxpayer”).  Shift the loss to another lot of taxpayers.  Foul play.

Dealing with that pesky underhand funding for Brown’s lot is a piece of cake.  Teflon Tony’s got nothing on this:

Asked about the top ten Labour donors, he said: “I couldn’t name them at this  moment.  I do know they are listed and public and reported by the Electoral  Commission.  If you ask me do I know who they are by name, I don’t know who is  one, two or three”.

What a surprise, Gordo.  One-Rule-for-Them, eh?  Offside.
It gets worse too:

“You’ve got to remember parties are voluntary organisations and they do need   advice on how they can follow such a complex rulebook”.

A complex rule book designed by your lot only a few years ago.  Now there’s no-one in the team who has the faintest notion of what their legislation was all about.  So the taxpayers (definitely not a voluntary organisation!) have to stump up to explain your own mess, - to you!  Own goal.

Newspeak and Meaningless crap from the politicos

“The results of the consultation, released yesterday, were overwhelmingly in favour of the new tax.  Among the 164 respondents which included waste-management companies, environmental groups, and 18 individuals, the support rating for the proposal was 80.5 per cent.  The consultation summary says that opinion was divided only among the individuals.”

Thus reports The Times on October 25th 2007, regarding a proposal for new rubbish taxes.  Who is surprised that waste-managers and environmentalists want a rubbish tax?  Those pesky, ignorant individuals should never have been consulted at all, should they?  They all have different ideas anyway.  Sheer waste of time.

This is what the pols really love.  Steal from all our wallets to hobble the true choices we would make, and (very occasionally) seek a handful of opinions, alongside those of some specially selected interest groups (already opinionated), on what they should do with the loot.  After all:

“Widening access to power is as important as widening access to wealth and opportunity”                                                                                       

Or,

“We believe in devolving power down to the lowest level so that local    people are given greater control over their own lives”.

Or,

“Devolution of power must not stay at national level.  Councillors know    how to best serve their local communities.”

How?  The answer is in the very next sentence:

“We’re introducing a fairer system of local taxation.”

At Government level of course!

“People have to become involved in political life once more, and the only possible coalition is one in which people are united at the grass roots.”

These quotations come from a Labour Conference, a Labour Manifesto, a Conservative Manifesto, and a Liberal Conference.  All are in my book and one of them is quoted from the 1975 edition.  Can you get the order right and name those concerned?

What we see here is the Faustian bargain delivered under a “mature” Democracy.  Occasionally the consultation group covers all those with a vote, but far more often we have “consultations” of powerful interest groups. We the sheeple sign over our private rights and property to professional politicians who then share big dollops amongst themselves and parcel the rest out to political interest groups.  At best this is like two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch; far more commonly there is one wolf with a vote and a dozen lambs with none.

Firmly in the latter category is the Cameroon Schools Policy – see my posting of 27th November below.