Tae see oorselves as ithers see us......

The international edition of The Namibian newspaper reports on the serious issues in UK politics...

The Malawian judge must have been watching the love-in in the garden at Number ten...

And, with an eye on the World Cup,  Michael Gove practices his simulation  ...

Nick's Great Reform "act"

I listened to Nick Clegg's "biggest shake up since the Great Reform Act of 1832" speech on the radio today.

I was astonished to hear him reveal ...

..... all of the intrusive and unnecessary laws that inhibit your freedom.......Our democracy has suffered at the hands of encroaching centralisation and secrecy for decades...citizens' rights: eroded by the quiet proliferation of laws that increase surveillance, quash dissent, limit freedom...executive authority: consistently increased by successive administrations to the point that we now have a neutered parliament and government that enjoys almost untrammelled control .....

...that we had been living in an oppressed and enslaved sub-soviet enclave until May 6th.

Little did we know...freedom and liberty curtailed and cramped to such an extent that criminals could be photographed and identified on CCTV and apprehended by merely leaving their DNA at the scene of the crime....

....an affront to Liberal Democrats everywhere..... no wonder the people revolted.....

How Nick and Dave bravely overcame the politburo and the commissars to sneak into samizdat (but posh, obviously) fee paying education and then earned an illicit living through the underground economy. To chose to work in such defiantly decadent and deliberately effete anti-soviet occupations such as PR and Parliamentary Lobbying must have taken every fibre of courage they could muster. It'll be a grand tale for their memoirs in the blissful freedom of the post soviet era.

Thank you Nick for that insight....

Or did you just go a wee bit mad...?

As I said, I heard the speech on radio, but revisiting the text confirms first impressions: it's full of generalisations, inanities with a leavening of unintentional humour.

e.g

Generalisation:

This government is going to break up concentrations of power and hand power back to people, because that is quite simply how we can build a society that is fair.

Easy to say, but how? identifying a "problem" is easy....George Osborne was so enraged by the number of quangos that his first act was to set up a quango to tell him what to do next....
Inanity:

Landmark legislation, from politicians who refused to sit back and do nothing while huge swathes of the population remained helpless against vested interests. Who stood up for the freedom of the many, not the privilege of the few.

Is this meaningless drivel, or is droit de signeur ended at last....

Humour:

..... citizens' rights: eroded by the quiet proliferation of laws that increase surveillance, quash dissent, limit freedom.

That'll be the Tory dream of repealing the Human Rights Act, will it Nick?

The whole thing is hyperbolic, bathetic, arrogant and vainglorious.

Actually, quite an accurate character study of Mr Clegg himself....

Boris Breaks Cover....Redwood Agrees...Davis Dives In. Coalition Blues.

The first cracks in the Tory support for the ConDem Coalition have appeared and, surprise surprise, they come from the direction of Boris Johnson, John Redwood and David Davis.

Two of the attacks are about finance and taxation.

Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London, professional buffoon and Cameron's most obvious rival for the affections of their party, is enraged by the coalitions plans, not yet clearly defined, to somehow curtail the activities of banks and the City of London in the wake of the banking crisis and the resultant recession. Boris isn't just politely dismissive, he thinks it's "nuts"...

I think it is completely nuts for people to want, as a matter of public policy, to attack the financial sector.

John Redwood, convinced neo-con, comical mimer to Welsh anthems and serial  unreconcilable, has revealed that he has organised a group of Tory MPs and Peers to oppose the ConDem Coalition's Capital Gains Tax plans.

Redwood says that ...

...Conservatives and Lib-Dems had deeply differing views on tax. Deep in Lib-Dem DNA is the Robin Hood principle — tax the rich and give to the poor.... It is superficially popular, and gives believers a feeling of moral superiority. Deep in Conservative DNA is the belief that society and the economy work better if you allow people to be successful and to pay their own bills....

Davis takes a diferent angle, voicing his concern over the proposed 55% threshold for the dissolution of Parliament. In Davis's opinion ..

...we could have a government in parliament which could command 45 per cent, or 45 per cent plus one, of parliamentary votes, but no more, and therefore couldn’t deliver a budget, couldn’t deliver its manifesto, couldn’t deliver its normal legislation and yet couldn’t be thrown out either......a government in parliament which could command 45 per cent, or 45 per cent plus one, of parliamentary votes, but no more, and therefore couldn’t deliver a budget, couldn’t deliver its manifesto, couldn’t deliver its normal legislation and yet couldn’t be thrown out either.

It has been clear that many Conservative grass-roots activists are not happy at the Cameron/Clegg beterothal. So far they have been content to grumble in private and wait and see. But the emergence of such pointed criticism from the upper echelons of the party, so soon after the election and in the persons of such eminent and instantly recognisable Tory heavyweights might push the unease into the open.

It certainly cannot be helpful to Cameron/Clegg and their Conservative Coalition. It must rate as the shortest honeymoon period for any government in modern times.

The Dust Settles

Two items of news: the dust cloud from Iceland closes all airports and the dust settles from the Leaders' debate.

So who is the winner? Well the planes are still grounded, so the traveller and the airlines both lose against nature.

As for the debates, for what it's worth, I thought Clegg won the beauty contest, Brown won the contest of argument and substance and Cameron lost over all.

How that plays over the next few days and whether it has a long term impact on the opinion polls and the real election poll is still to be seen.

If it has an effect, and the Lib Dems pick up and hold on to a few more marginals, the Tories will be the big losers.

And the SNP in Scotland might rue a Lib Dem surge, with two or three holds that the Nats might be targeting.

Of course, there are two more debates to go, so it could all still change. Maybe Nick will bomb and Dave will soar.