Am I just being a grumpy old man?

Watching and reading the media, you could get the impression that a new dawn has broken in ConDem Britain. According to the journalists, all is smiles and nods and winks and pictures of betrothed Clegg and Cameron swooning in each others arms, happy politicians slapping each other on the back and "historic" cabinet meetings with ministers grinning towards the cameras.

But is it really so? Has a new dawn really broken? Is it all milk and honey and sweetness and light across the land?

Not on the streets, IMO. I may be wilfully obtuse, but I don't see this bonhomie stretching to the actual population. It seems to me that the people I meet, while not exactly sullen, are not chirpy either. Wary is the mood, cautious, waiting. We'll give this lot  a chance to show that they are better than the last lot, but I wouldn't hold my breath, is the feeling of the people.

The majority did not want the Conservatives. In fact many people voted Lib Dem precisely in order to keep the Tories out, and now they have a Tory government, they're not quite sure how it happened, and they are not happy.  The population is not rebellious yet, but you get the feeling that it will not take much to get them to see the fault lines in the ConDem Coalition.

And then the waiting might just turn to wailing....

And I'm not really that grumpy, I like  a laugh as much as the next man... listen here

All changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born....or is it?

UK politics, we are being told, has changed beyond recognition. The coalition of Tories and Liberal Democrats is historic and things will, if we believe the commentators, never be the same.

Whether you buy that analysis, and whether you think that the Tory/Lib Dem alliance is a good or bad thing, or if it will work, is a matter of choice. At the moment nobody really knows what is going on, how the arrangement will work out, and what impact it will have on the parties and the country.

But one thing hasn't changed, and that's the ability of our Liberal Democrat friends to fool themselves and the public about their "caring" policies. During the negotiations with David Cameron the Lib Dems made a big thing about protecting their policy of raising tax thresholds above £10,000 "to help the very poorest", which is, on the face if it, a laudable aim.

But it seems that they have got their sums wrong, or their policy. Tim Horton and Howard Reed of the Fabian Society have conducted an investigation into the policy and its effects for the blog "Left Foot Forward".  

Horton and Reed conclude that the policy fails by;

- Ignoring the poorest

- Giving less to poorer households and more to richer households

- Increasing inequality between the bottom and the middle

According to their report;

the Liberal Democrats’ proposed tax cut fails the fairness test.

Spending £17 billion on increasing the personal allowance is a very poor way to help those on low incomes. It could actually harm the welfare of low-income households by increasing inequality and relative poverty

In fact the Fabian team conclude that the policy, which costs around £17 billion, is really a mechanism to distribute money from the well off to those on middle incomes. The bottom 10% of earners will benefit least of any earnings group.

Left Foot Forward has a more detailed report ....

£17 billion pounds is not peanuts, and already the Conservatives admit to having a problem about how to find the cash to pay for the Lib Dems promise.

I suspect the Tories will be quite happy that the policy is not nearly as redistributive as is claimed. It's the low earners (and those who care about them) who voted Lib Dem on the strength of this promise of improvement in their finances that are bound to be disappointed when they open their pay packet after the first coalition budget and find that, in fact, not a lot has changed.

Adam Boulton and Alistair Campbell in on-air punch up.

what are we up against...

Adam Boulton, doyen of political commentators, most respected TV interviewer and star of Sky TV, loses it on air...

Actually, p.s. it looks like an ongoing spat.. Adam Boulton calls in Kelvin MacKenzie to "prove" that Sky is unbiased....???!!!  

The Lib Dems Dirty Secret (part the first)

As I write this, there are two public schoolboys carving up politcal power in Westminster. Eton and Westminster (and St Pauls, but we won't mention the oik), and Oxbridge combine, as so often in the past, to tell us what is best for them, and therefore what is best for us. So much for the "new politcs".....

And so far so ancien regime. But, as Nick Clegg struts his hour upon the stage, his party harbours a dirty secret that the press, for some reason, has ignored and kept the lid on. That secret is that the Liberal Democrats, the kingmakers and believers in "fair" politics, are not really a national party at all: in some areas they hardly exist as an "on the ground" organisation.

In evidence I give my own experience: the Lib Dem candidate in our constituency did not attend the count. Strange enough in itself, you might say, for a party that boasted of having 100 seats and maybe even being the biggest party in Parliament, for the candidate not to turn up at the count. But it's worse than that, much worse: the Lib Dem candidate did not appear in the constituency at all during the campaign. Not once. And no leaflets or statements were sent out by the Lib Dems, to my knowledge. I received none, and I know of no-one who did.

Even more shockingly, this is not the first time this has happened at Westminster and Scottish elections. The Liberal Democrats have put up a "ghost" candidate on at least two recent occassions in this seat. Far from being "fair", I believe that this shows a distressing contempt for the voters and the political process.

So as Nick Clegg dictates the terms of the next UK government, flexing his political muscles and flashing his six-pack, he conceals the the weakness of his organisation to deliver any agreement that he might make with the Tories. Nick's dirty little secret is that his party is not all it seems.   

It Was the Sun Wot Lost it!!

Yesterday Trevor Kavanagh (67), veteren Sun journalist, wrote this hysterical piece predicting riots in the streets of London if the voters were to defy the Sun and support anyone but Dave. If you don't do what we tell you, says the Super Soaraway Sun, Greek style chaos would ensue.

But, you know what?.... the people defied Trevor and the Sun. They refused to be bullied into electing the Conservatives, and they refused to be rushed into buying the whole Cleggmania package and they gave us a hung Parliament.

So, amid all the political furore about who will do deals with whom, and what shape a new Parliament will eventually take, one development is in danger of being missed: the print media is one of the big losers in this election.

Seven national papers supported the Tories, two supported the Lib Dems, and only one, The Mirror, supported Labour (two if you include the Mirror's Scottish sister, The Daily Record), but theTories failed to get a majority, and the Lib Dems failed to get any improvement in their vote. Given all the media support of the Conservatives and the supposed unpopularity of Gordon Brown, this is a massive failure of the political influence of the UK press.

But this situation was not entirely unpredictable: in February, when the Sun ran a campaign against Brown on the way he wrote and addresssed letters to bereaved relatives of military casualties, the resultant pressure on Brown was viewed as illegitimate and massively unfair. The paradoxical outcome was that Brown got a huge sympathy vote, his personal ratings improved and the beginning of the Labour recovery in the polls was established. The Sun's attacks were counter productive, producing the opposite effect to the paper's intentions.

Similarly when the print media, in the Conservative interest, attacked Nick Clegg with charges of Nazism and other nonsense, the Lib Dems consolidated their improvement in the polls and Cleggmania was off and running. Once again the public told the press where to get off in pushing an agenda that the people did not buy.

So the print media, previously so powerful and dominating, so used to dictating to Prime Ministers and government departments, has failed in its stated aims of forcing a Cameron government on the people.  The Sun, the embodiment of this hubris, the newspaper above all others which has arrogantly assumed that it rules the country and that politicians must bow to to the will of Rupert, has lost the plot and lost the power.

After the 1992 election, the Sun ran a famous headline which boldly claimed that "It Was The Sun Wot Won It!". In 2010 the matching headline would have to be "It Was The Sun Wot Lost It!".

Be Very Afraid.....Thatcher MKII

This warning is worth listening to...

Gordon Wows London Citizens ..... with Extras!!!!

Gordon Brown today made the speech of the campaign at a "London Citizens" event. Articulate, compassionate and full of energy and commitment, the Prime Minister gave the lie to those who say he is dull, lacks passion and understanding of the concerns of ordinary people.

Watch, listen and enjoy GB at his best....





And then there's this.....