David Discovers Broken Britain.....

David Cameron invented the phrase "Broken Britain" to describe a type of social collapse that he supposed characterised the Labour years and which was an outcome of Labour philosophy.

Irony of ironies, it seems to have taken only a year of Mr Cameron's Premiership to actually break Britain....

Cutting jobs and services and police numbers is coming home to roost, as  Nick Clegg predicted and Boris Johnson highlights...

London's burning... and so are Manchester, Salford, Birmingham, Liverpool........

Parts of Britain are indeed broken... and the chickens are coming home to roost for the inventor of the slogan....

The BullShit Clarifies...

The BBC is reporting that PM Dave has written yet another article clarifying what he means by his Big Society (BS). And this time, there actually is some clarity, although not a lot of reassurance.

David Cameron says his vision for public services is an important part of his Big Society agenda

"David Cameron has promised to....end the state's monopoly over the public sector......the prime minister described his vision of "open public services"....and promised to release public services from the "grip of state control.....Mr Cameron added the initiative was was an important part of his Big Society agenda....The prime minister said he wanted an automatic right for private sector bodies to bid for public work, decision-making power to be given back to professionals, and people to have more control over the budget for the service they receive.... public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service.... there are some areas - like national security services or the judiciary - where this wouldn't make sense. But everywhere else should be open to real diversity....Cameron....insisted the state still had a crucial role to play in ensuring fair funding and access.The government hopes the plan will reduce bureaucracy, improve quality and save money....."

Let's interpret the PM's words.....

"an automatic right for private sector bodies to bid for public work"

= straightforward privatisation.

If any big international business can undercut the current provider, they can take the contract. And how would the undercut? By paying less and having fewer rights for the workers (that'd be the workers recently sacked from the local authority who were previously doing the work...). That's what happened in the '80s and that's what would happen again if this "plan" is ever put into action.

"...public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service...."

= cost cutting and quality reduction.

Contracting out has always, in the past, led to cheapest contracts being accepted and standards of quality falling. Think about it: we never had MRSA in our hospital wards until the Tories insisted in contracting out cleaning services. In recent years we have spent millions and had "cleaning task forces" and "emergency cleaning teams" in our hospitals to attempt to put that  situation (which should never have been allowed to happen in the first place) right.

"there are some areas - like national security services or the judiciary - where this wouldn't make sense."  

=  the police and the judges are generally Conservative, but don't worry lads, we'll protect your jobs.

There are actually lots of other services (see hopitals above) where it doesn't make sense either, but we have to keep the police and the justice system onside (ref. Miners Strike 1984) in case the oiks get uppity.

"Cameron....insisted the state still had a crucial role to play in ensuring fair funding and access." 

= we, you and me, the mugs, still pay....

You continue to pay, it's just that you no longer have any real democratic control over service delivery...


"reduce bureaucracy, improve quality and save money....." 

= cut jobs, cut quality, cut taxes for those still able to pay them...

So the Big Society isn't really Bull Shit. Dave wasn't being vague because he wasn't clear about his own ideas, he was being evasive, because he knew fine well the real implications of the Big Society (BS). This version of the BS is revealed as a return to Thatcherite privatisation, job cutting, the run down of services and the weakening of local democracy.

It's a Thatcherite dream and it's coming to a school or a hospital or care home near you. Let's hope it's not the one your kids go to or your elderly relatives are in....

I'll cut the NHS, not the deficit...

The most famous poster from last year's election campaign was this...

 

"We can't go on like this, I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS"

In many interviews since then, Cameron has insisted that his government will protect front-line NHS services.

And Cameron's old Etonian mate, the A-list promoted Zac Gldsmith, promised to resign if his local hospital had to cut front-line services.

Today a number of hospital trusts have announced that they are cutting front line NHS jobs.

But, surprise surprise, Zac Goldsmith has backed the Kingston Hospital cuts. He said: "Hospitals around the country are having to find savings, and ours is no different."

Kingston hospital - visited by David Cameron during the election campaign with a promise that its maternity unit would not be closed - is to lose 500 jobs. The news comes as Unison secretary Dave Prentis condemned a further 500 job losses at St George's Hospital in South London as a "devastating blow".

Health minister Simon Burns said: "We are protecting the NHS with investment which Labour opposes. But this doesn't mean that the NHS can't become more efficient."

So "I'll cut the deficit not the NHS", and "I'll resign if my local hospital has to cut front line staff", becomes....

"We are protecting the NHS....".

And the band played believe it if you like...

Point of Order Mr Speaker...

Today at PMQs, David Cameron denied that the money for the Sure Start programme had been cut. The denial was puzzling because the point has been made on numerous occassions that Sure Start is being cut. It's not a matter of any controversy, in fact Sure Start is in danger of being decimated and Tories seem happy about that.

Even so, David Cameron said the programme had not been cut. He even insisted in coming back with another denial after Miliband persisted in the accusation.

Tonight Andy Burnham, believing that the PM had got his facts wrong, attempted to raise a point of order with the Speaker, John Bercow, asking that the PM be censured for misleading the House. The Speaker refused, but could he be as wrong as Cameron?

Channel 4's factcheck website has looked at Miliband's accusation, Cameron's denial and the facts of the matter, and comes up with the verdict  

"Cameron misled the House of Commons".

"Cathy Newman's Verdict


David Cameron slipped up today by confusing the Sure Start budget with the broader early intervention grant. On that, FactCheck believes he misled the Commons.


But he was also less clear than he should have been by omitting to mention that this year’s early intervention grant has been cut by 11 per cent – choosing to focus instead on the very small increase in next year’s figures.
And that’s even before we get into the fact that none of the money in the early intervention grant has to be spent on Sure Start.


Councils have been given a free hand to close as many centres as they wish. The Prime Minister may find himself having to clarify all this before too long."

Seems clear enough. David Cameron displayed his usual detached attitude to fact and evidence. He tried to win the argument by presenting fiction as fact, and he has been found out.

I see an abject Prime Ministerial apology approaching.....

David Cameron prepares the England World Cup bid...

The Secret Tories

In the past the Conservative Party was known as the "nasty party", a fact acknowleged by the present Home secretary, Theresa May, among others.

With his talk of "National Wellbeing" and the soggy idea of "The Big Society", David Cameron has gained a lot of kudos for supposedly "de-toxifying" the Conservative Party's image. But it seems that the party's image resists detoxification, Mr Cameron has an ongoing battle and it hasn't actually been won yet.

Last week I pointed out that Lord Young had been sacked when he said that this was a "so-called" recession and that most people "never had it so good". Lord Young was sacked, not for what he said, but because he spoke a truth that many Tories feel in their bones and that David Cameron doesn't want you to hear.

Today, someone called Howard Flight, (who has apparently been a Tory MP and a Conservative Party Vice Chair, not that I had heard of him, but so what? and has now been made a peer by David Cameron), has said that government policy is encouraging the poor to breed too much. Again, Mr Flight is only saying what many Tories say in their own company, in their clubs and in private conversations. His crime is to say it in public and with a recording device in close proximity.

Mr Flight has previous. He was sacked as a Parliamentary candidate in 2005, but it seems that he is still held in high enough regard by David Cameron to be appointed to the House of Lords on the Tory ticket.

In my experience his opinions (and similar neandethal nonsense) are not uncommon among Tory supporters and representatives. David Cameron has tried to change (or more accurately disguise) that fact, but it seems that changing the "image" is a far cry from changing the reality of the nasty party.

That's the Tories secret..... 

David Cameron and Happiness, part the 201st.....

David Cameron is making another speech on "Happiness" as I write this. According to the Conservative Home website, he will say;

"If your goal in politics is to help make a better life for people - which mine is - and if you know, both in your gut and from a huge body of evidence, that prosperity alone can’t deliver a better life - which I do - then you have got to take practical steps to make sure government is properly focussed on our quality of life as well as economic growth, and that’s what we are doing."

What he won't say is...

"If your goal in politics is to help make a better life for people - which mine is - and if you know, both in your gut and from a huge body of evidence, that prosperity alone can’t deliver a better life - which I do - then I am taking practical steps to give away 95% of my wealth and move to a council house in Westminster, the better to understand the 99.9% of people I never actually mix with and to make sure government is properly focussed on our quality of life as well as economic growth, and that’s what I am doing."

Creeping Coup D'Etat...

Or maybe not so much creeping as blatant.

David Cameron has just announced his House of Lords "reform": it consists of appointing 29 new Tory peers, 10 new Lib Dem peers and 15 new Labour peers. So the "fairness" agenda ensures that there are 3 times as many new coalition representatives in the Lords as opposition, making an already unbalanced situation even more advantageous to .... the coalition, of course.

This comes on top of the coaliton's plans to redefine the Westminster constituency boundaries to make sure that inner cities (Labour constituencies) have less say than rural (Tory and Lib Dem constituencies except Danny Alexander's and Charles Kennedy's and the Isle of Wight...).

Call me paranoid, but it looks suspiciously like the Tories are conducting a quiet overthrow of the constitution and the Lib Dem Lap Dogs are keeping their barking very quiet indeed....

a fierce Lib Dem  Lap-Dog Defends the British Constiution.

Given these numbers, the coalition will walk all of its contentious legislation through the Lords: there will be no chance of any real scrutiny or oversight. And, if all goes according to plan, after the next general election, they will never be challenged in Westminster again...

I'm not a great fan of Bills of Rights or written constitutions, but this situation cries out for some mechanism to challenge this blatant gerrymandering and to stop it in its tracks if possible.

The Greatest Gift That I Possess....

Happiness: what is it and can we get it?

In 1989, when he was acquitted of a charge of tax evasion, it was found that the comedian Ken Dodd (who had a minor hit in 1964 with a saccharine-sweet song "Happiness" ), had never actually paid the kids who played his "diddymen" on stage and that he had suitcases full of banknotes under his bed. We can be reasonably sure what would or does make Mr Dodd happy.

Now to the present and political: our current Prime Minister David Cameron is reported to have ordered an investigation into the levels of national happinesss, presumably so that he can better shape national policy in future...

Ken Dodd (or is it David Cameron?) seeks the Font of Happiness

One of the problems for the investigation of something as nebulous as "happiness" is to find a workable definition and to identify what it is that makes the people and societies "happy".

Unfortunately for Mr Cameron, of the many studies that have been done, from Professor Richard Layard's various studies into depression and wellbeing which were supported by the last Labour Government to The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Pickett, the clear answer is: not Free Markets or Neo Liberal Economics, which must be a disappointment for the party which believes so strongly in markets, and the freer the better.

The bulk of the evidence, in study after study, shows that, after a certain level, accumulations of wealth and belongings brings no measurable increase in wellbeing to individuals or to societies. This is in direct opposition to the Tory faith in the individual's right to make as much money as possible with no questions asked, and the Tory insistence that "there is no such thing as society".

In fact The Spirit Level has compelling evidence that the more equal a society is, the higher levels of wellbeing are measured in that society.

David Cameron is welcome to his investigation, and to ponder the results when they come. I doubt very much that they will recommend more expansions of "free" markets or the lauding of individualism to the detriment of common cause.

Just where that leaves Conservative Party policy or philosophy is another matter....

Window breaking hooligans....

Our Dear Leader has been in China selling aero engines, lecturing on Democracy and sending disapproving messages back to the window-breaking hooligans who left the student protests to attack Tory HQ yesterday.

Following the PM's lead, Tory HQ, Tory MPs and the Tory press have all united to condemn the window-breakers. And rightly so. Breaking windows is not a laughing matter, it is criminal damage and should be punished...

Meanwhile a certain Jim Pickard of the Financial Times has dug up a tale of window-breaking hooligans of two decades ago, to wit the Bullingdon Bullies of Oxford, one of whom was, allegedly, the future PM and husband of the delicious SamCam.

When approached for a quote, Tory HQ was less talkative on these particular Eton educated window-breaking hooligans... wonder why?

Read the "delicious" details here...

Tory splits.....

While the media gets itself all in a tiz over whether David Miliband will work with his brother, a real story is going almost unreported. The Torygraph is alone in highlighting the spilts within the coalition on defence spending. It has a front page story based on a leak from the MoD which reveals a fundamental split in the Conservative approach to defence cuts.

According to a letter from Defence Minister Liam Fox to David Cameron, the proposed cuts in the defence programme are:

““financially and intellectually virtually impossible” at a time of war."

He warns of the political damage that the cuts will do to the Tory party and the coalition;

“Frankly, this process is looking less and less defensible as a proper SDSR and more like a “super CSR” (comprehensive spending review). If it continues on its current trajectory it is likely to have grave political consequences for us...."

There has been a slew of opinion polls telling us that the public "supports" the coalition's spending cuts as necessary in tough financial times, and no doubt there is some truth in that. But this episode shows that even Tory Ministers, who would be presumed to be in favour of the cuts in principle, have grave reservations when the practical effects of the cuts hit nearer to home.

In this case Liam Fox, whose entire career has cast him as a hawk in terms of government spending, suddenly finds that he cannot take the decisions which are the logicical outcome of the his political beliefs and his fiscal position. As with Fox, so with every other spending department, and even more so with the public.

Everyone can agree that "something must be done". That's the easy bit. But when that "something" is a cut in your own wages or benefits, or your local school or hospital or even worse, it results in you losing your job, then the public will have exactly the same reaction as Dr Fox. They most assuredly will not like it and they will not be slow to let their feeling be known.

Cut the other guy is a good idea. I can live with that. Cut me and mine, and y'know Dave, I'm not so sure about that.

Oh Joanna..!!!

One of the defining stories of the last year of Gordon Brown's Government was the spat between Joanna Lumley and the Government over the way ex-Ghurka soldiers were (or were not) permitted to settle in the UK.

The fragrant Ms Lumley comprehensively out-manouvred various Ministers and Government Departments and the Labour Government came out looking foolish and nasty and the villian of the piece.... David Cameron and other opposition figures made much of their sympathy with the Ghurkas and Joanna and said how thoroughly rotten we were to stop all of them migrating here forthwith.

Well here's a wee surprise: in a not-much-commented-upon article in the Observer at the weekend, Mark Townsend and Toby Helm reveal that "Gurkha regiment faces axe ........" It seems that the ConDems are looking at abolishing the Regiment Of Ghurkas altogether...

It seems that, now that they have permission to settle in the UK, the Tories don't really need them any more...

Things I wish I'd thought of first....No 1017....

Take a look at this truly disturbing image and try not to laugh and choke at the same time....

Tories in Budget Denial

The Guardian has a nice juxtaposition on its front page today...

And it's not just the Guardian, the Telegraph (Torygraph) has the same stories and photograph with almost the same headlines.... the question is: is it deliberate?

It's great that the PM has a new child, particularly given the family tragedy of the death of his young son, so it might seem churlish to add an "ah-but"....

But (nevertheless) the timing of this happy family event is a reminder that this Tory Government has launched a budget which damages British families, with what the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown to be a very regressive attack on the poorest families, who will lose much more in total and in proportion to their already very small incomes.

"The IFS said it had always been sceptical about Osborne's claim that the budget was "progressive" but added that this instant judgment had been reinforced by a study of proposed changes to housing benefit, disability allowances and tax credits due to come in between now and 2015".

and...

"Passing judgment that is likely to make uncomfortable reading for the Liberal Democrats, the IFS concluded: "Once all of the benefit cuts are considered, the tax and benefit changes announced in the emergency budget are clearly regressive as, on average, they hit the poorest households more than those in the upper middle of the income distribution in cash, let alone percentage, terms".

In other words the poorest lose most in cash terms and in percentage terms. The richest lose a lot less.

Now, you and I might say "so far so Tory", and even "so what?". But the fact is that George Osborne stood in Parliament and said "My budget is a progressive budget. It will hit the poorest least". Now it transpires that the Treasury was being economical with the truth...by choosing to end its analysis at 2012 and by excluding some measures from the calculation, it has given the impression that there will be relatively progressive outcomes. But the budget regulates tax and spending until 2015. And after 2012 the effect on the poorest becomes much clearer.

Nick Clegg, in his defence of George Osborne, claimed that the budget had "fairness in its bones". But he was apparently lying through his teeth mistaken.

We know that Tories "in their bones", care little for the poor, but the Lib Dems have spent decades broadcasting their "caring" credentials. Now that the truth has been revealed, where does that leave the bleeding heart crocodile tears so-called caring Liberal Democrats? In a very uncomfortable place if my judgement is right.

So do they really care? It's my belief that, if this revelation from the IFS does not prompt defections of the Liberal Democrats MPs to Labour, we can consign the "caring Lib Dems" to the dustbin of betrayal and broken promises.

For the last few weeks the Tories have been throwing out the accusation that Labour is in "deficit denial". It looks like they are now in "budget denial"...

it's YOUR fault... aye you

David Cameron has announced the end of secure tenancies for council tenants. It seems the Tories blame council tenants for any housing shortage, and if you are fortunate enough to have a council house then you better prepare to give it up! 

Hey Grannie, you might have been our tenant for 50 years, but it's time to get out.....
love David xxx

Charming, and oh so Tory.

And it's another broken Tory promise. During the election campaign, David Cameron denied that he would target secure council tenancies.

Now he says that's exactly what he will do...

Does Dave Exist?

Busy weekend, so only picked up my New Statesman half an hour ago to find a gem of an article by George Walden, ex-Tory MP and diplomat. Mr Walden does a fabulous filleting job on our very own Tory PM, David Cameron.

In George Waldon's view,  Mr Cameron is not real personality at all, but a "simulacrum", an imperfect image of reality. Exactly how imperfect, Mr Waldon is keen to show us.

Prize quotes

"...watching David Cameron in the leaders' TV debates, Cameron posing in front of No 10, Cameron impersonating a commoner in Whitehall, a spectre among the masses, who has not experienced a hallucinatory feeling, a sense of insubstantiality?" 

"....Churchill wrote history, Harold Macmillan published books, Margaret Thatcher was a lawyer and a chemist. Cameron shovelled TV trash into the maw of the masses. His way of making a crust, and why not? Ethically it is fine, in the way running an escort agency or a pole-dancing club is fine: the mugs are there to be conned and someone's going to do it. Just don't moralise at us when you have." 

In two pages of incisive and splenetic prose, Mr Walden skewers Cameron's insincerity and lack of substance in some  of the best written journalism I have encountered in many a year....

Read it and weep, tears of laughter and tears of frustration.

Don't be disappointed, George...

For weeks now the Conservatives have been painting as black a picture of the economy as it is possible to envisage: the UK is in as big a hole as Greece, the deficit is unprecedented and unsustainable, we are all off to hell in a handcart if we don't cut public services and cut deep and cut soon. George Osborne claimed in the Commons yesterday that an "independent" forecast provided "damning evidence that the UK's public finances were even worse than thought".

It has to be said that the "independence" of the source, the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR), is not a given: Sir Alan Budd's organisation was set up as a Tory think tank and was already producing reports and analysis for the Conservative Party before the general election. Even so, and "independent" or not, the OBR has not endorsed Mr Osborne's claim the things are worse than previously thought. In fact the deficit is confirmed as much lower than previously forecast. The OBR report also confirms that decisions already taken by Alasdair Darling are sufficient to meet George Osborne's aim to "substantially reduce" the deficit by 2015, without the necessity for any further savage cuts. UK debt is mostly incurred at low rates over a long period, and should prove more sustainable than the debt of most other countries. The UK is not Greece, or anything like it.

One of the more astonishing aspects of the affair is that George Osborne seemed peeved and disappointed at the (relatively) good news produced by the OBR. It seems that our Chancellor would rather claim some party advantage from a gloomy forecast than accept that things are not as black as they could be.

The suspicion grows that the Conservatives wish to use the excuse of the recession to achieve the Thatcherite aim of repealing and dismantling the post-war consensus on the Welfare State. Maggie failed in her aim. But she did much damage in the process, drivin up unemployment, dividing the nation, selling off the family silver and wasting the oil bonanza on city booms and busts that ended in the ignomonious destruction of the UK economy on Black Wednesday.

David Cameron was a young adviser to the then Chancellor, Norman Lamont. If Mr Cameron really still does harbour the dreams of the Tory right of his youth, of  a neutered state, mass privatisation and a decimated public sector, then it is fortunate for us, the people of the UK who depend upon these essential public services, that the Tories' own "independent" consultants have failed to provide the cover for the savage cuts that this strategy implies.

Who "won" the leaders' debate?

The question might be: did anyone win the leaders' debate? Indeed, can anyone win the leaders debate? What is a win and what is a loss in these particular circumstances?

There's the straight post-debate opinion polls, taken in the immediate aftermath of the debate. These show the first impressions of those who watched the action, and are pored over and puffed by the parties' spinners. According to these, last night's winner was not as clear as last week's, when Nick Clegg was declared ahead of the other two: Cameron second and Brown a distant third.

Last night Brown came up strongly on the rails. From 20% in last week's post-debate polls, to 30% this week. Clegg and Cameron, neck and neck and still narrowly ahead.

So, did Clegg win? Or Cameron? Or Brown win? Or was it a three-way draw?

The BBC is saying the "there is no clear winner".

ConservativeHome and the blog of Lynne Featherstone, LibDem candidate, both emphasise the matter of "momentum". They think that the actual result is less important than the strength and direction of the movement of their favoured candidate. Both of these sources claim that the "momentum" is with their man.

Maybe so, and neither Clegg nor Cameron lost ground (broadly), but the momentum argument is about movement, motion: and the motion, according to these polls is with Gordon Brown. From a distant third, on 20% approval in these polls last week, he has leapt to joint second on around 30%. This is a huge jump and, in terms of movement, it is the most real momentum of any of the three men.

If we carry the analogy further and apply it to a three-horse race, the competitor moving fastest as we approach the final furlong is the competitor with the best chance of catching and overtaking the other two. If we really believe in the argument on "momentum", then Gordon Brown has the momentum, he's moving forward faster and further than his two rivals, (who are, relatively, treading water), and Brown now has a chance, at least, to take the race, an outcome that looked most unlikely this time last week.

P.S.

The results of an ICM poll done after the debate.

1.  Who would be best PM?  GB 35%, Cameron 33% and Clegg 26%.
2.  On the same question amongst C1's GB 39 v DC 27% and Clegg 26%, and C2s  GB 39, DC 33 and NC 22.
3.  On who would make the right decisions ins difficult times  GB 43%, DC 34% and NC, 18%.
4.  47% of all voters think DC is more spin than substance, 54% of C1 voters believe that.
5.  On decisiveness GB now leads DC 38 v33 and Clegg at 25.

So, substance can win over style. And GB is substance while DC and NC are PR.

David Cameron says "Family is the best welfare state..."

On this video, David Cameron makes the claim that ..."...family... is the best welfare state we ever had..."

Is it indeed....? So the 35 million Americans with no health insurance, and the 100 million or so with inadequate cover, can turn to their families when they need an operation or an expensive therapy or drug regime to save their lives or their quality of life?

Closer to home, can the ordinary person in the UK afford the best education for their kids from an average or below average weekly wage? I really, honestly, think not.

We in the UK have been fortunate indeed that the last century has been one of real progress on the social front. My grandfather was a day labourer, standing on street corners for the gaffer's nod.  In all of his life he never earned more than a pittence.  When his family needed help he went to "the parish", a sometimes grudging and judgemental provider of last resort and of cold charity. My father told me of going to school in parish boots and clothes. That family, my father's family, my family, however tight knit and supportive, had no chance in hell of providing more than the bare essentials, and sometimes not even those. Decent hospitals? ... no chance...A doctor to call?.....only if you've got half-a-crown...Schools with a sufficency of books and jotters and pencils? Forget it.  University.. you must be kidding missus, that's on another planet. Oh you mean as a shoe-polisher to the gentry? Now that's different...that we can manage.

Over the years, things got better. Gradually and grudgingly, thanks to Trades Unions and Labour politicians and people who cared about other people, the Conservative establishment was forced to give better rights and better conditions to the majority of our citizens. They didn't relinquish those right willingly: even at the formation of the NHS, Ernest Bevin  complained that he had to "stuff the mouth's of the consultants with gold" to get them to agree to a better, more universal and fairer health service for all.

Poverty is not what it was in those days, and a good thing too. But the lesson remains the same: the best services for the most people are best provided by the community acting through the state.

Maybe David Cameron thinks that his family is like all families. That one only has to cough and a distinguished physician is at one's right elbow with a soothing word and bottle of the latest curing tincture.  But it's decidedly not like that for the rest of us.

Getting the best health care or schooling (or indeed any healthcare or schooling) might be ok if your family is upper middle class, well off or even millionaires like Cameron and Osborne and most of the Tory front bench.... but isn't the lesson of the last 100 years that we, all of us, are better off as a nation if we pool resources, not just as families, but as communities. And the state can deliver much better social provision to a much greater number of citizens than family or cold Victorian charity?

David Cameron makes much of his conversion to being a supporter of the NHS through experiencing the unfortunate illness of his son. I read that, and today's statement only confirms my suspicion, as a sign that Mr Cameron lacks the imagination and historical perspective to understand the needs, wants and requirements of the people he desires to lead, and a real commitment to the institutions that the country needs to deliver those requirements to all, for the good of us all.

Is Dave Ducking Again?.....New Tory Election Broadcast

Has David Cameron bottled out again....?

The Conservatives were due to produce an election broadcast for today, and it was a swipe at Labour: a full blooded attack, as some of David Cameron's advisers were saying only yesterday.

But today he has abandoned the already completed film (not done lightly, these films cost lots of money to produce) and instead he has done a "straight to camera" piece targetting the Lib Dems. Only the Tories can bring change, apparently, and only a full-face Cameron can carry the message.

It looks like a cop-out to me. The PEB itself is weak, with  a set of almost repeat shots of Cameron talking to invited audiences, and the message, which Cameron wantd to be "only I have the strength to bring the change you want", is usurped by the fact that sudden changes like this in mid-campaign look like a panic reaction to events which you cannot control.

The actual message I got from the broadcast was: "we're panicking in the face of the Lib Dem poll surge". Rather than focusing the spotlight on the Lib Dems, the tactic has the result of focusing on the Conservative unease at the current state of the polls. It looks like they've been blown off track and had to change their tactic at the last minute, which gives the appearance of being very weak indeed.