Tuesday 23 February 2010

Poor David Cameron. None too bright.

A long time ago, he said it was time to end 'Punch and Judy politics' - before spending the intervening period abusing Gordon Brown in an abusive student-debating fashion (and despite having a reputation for being utterly poisonous). In addition - his political strategist Steve Hilton was arrested for loutish behaviour - apparently top Tories don't need to actually buy train tickets.

Next up was Dave's silly Banana Republic-style personal posters. Then his sidekick Osborne announced that the solution to the banking crisis is to sell us the banks we'd already paid for and supported - at a low price. The only other problem with this brilliant wheeze is that we need the bank shares to reach 70p to get our money back. So selling shares to us at half price means that investors won't want the shares - so we'll never get our money back. He's going to be chancellor, by the way.

Now Dave's in trouble with the serious economists. He's been mocking Labour for weeks, suggesting that the International Monetary Fund (a bunch of reactionaries, by the way) might need to intervene in the British economy, as they did in the 1970s - a major humiliation.

Let's turn to the IMF. What do they say?

Oh dear. They say that David's plan to immediately pay off the debt we incurred saving David's banking friends and donors is a really bad idea. They seem to think that Gordon's plan to keep investing in the economy while reducing the £170bn deficit slowly is more likely to prevent ruin.

This government thing. It's not like having a jolly old chinwag down at the Bullingdon Club, is it?

3 comments:

Tarquin de Quincey said...

I see you using the stereotype to full effect there. All Tories are posh. Posh therefore means evil. Comparing the running of a country to the running of some silly, long-forgotten about club(bar your brilliant memory and picture)is juvenile, as most of these "tory scum" were in this picture.

Should the Conservatives - the actual party name as opposed to the frankly offensive term used regularly on this very blog - be elected to run the government of this country then we, as a collective, should stand by them just like we have had to stand by Labour through this torrid time of warmongering. I'm sure Cameron and the rest of the party will run the country like the adults they are and not the posh, bequiffed young adults they were.

I've heard of us Brits having a stiff upper lip but most of this post is just lip aimed at Conservative party members and supporters alike.

Tarquin

The Plashing Vole said...

15 Tory MPs voted against the war: 139 Labour MPs voted against it, so I think you'll find the warmongering will go on.

I think you'll find that the Bullingdon episodes aren't 'forgotten about' - the media discuss it repeatedly. The Tories are still very sensitive about it: hence their purchase of the copyright of the photo so that nobody can use it legally. Given that one of the people in the photo is Mayor of London, one's about to be Prime Minister and others are major Tory donors, it's a matter of public interest. It's hardly a coincidence that an Oxford-only, Tory-only, top-private-school-only, £10,000 per year club is furnishing a generation of politicians. It's a route into a justified discussion of the roots of inequality and unrepresentativeness in public life.

Posh doesn't necessarily mean evil, but it does mean the continued entrenchment of privilege. These people believe that they should run the country because they're aristocrats, never grasping the idea that their privileges are the result of centuries of ongoing inequality. Cameron's plans to reform inheritance tax, for example, redistributes tax from everybody to 3000 families, all of whom are already hugely rich.

Not all Tories are posh by the way - but the current shadow cabinet is 50% Old Etonian: that's a marker of cash and a certain social milieu rather than intelligence. Non-posh Tories are equally repulsive: selfish individualists mostly. The 1980s saw the Tory culture wars, between the posh old Tories and Thatcher's money Tories. At the moment, posh Tories seem to have the upper hand, though they like parading Eric Pickles to prove that the occasional oik is permitted.

Well done for noticing (your last line) that I'm having a pop at Tory members (a vanishing breed) and supporters. You say this like it's a revelation. In case you haven't noticed, I think that Tories are scum, and their supporters are either scum or badly misled. I don't, by the way, see much in the way of ideological discussion from you: I can be opinionated because I've got a strong base of ideological and historical knowledge.

'Us Brits' - not me. How exactly does one 'stand by' a government anyway? Does this actually mean anything. I despise the current Labour leadership - I'm far more leftwing. It's just that while Labour's been led into evil by swallowing Tory policies, the Tories are actually evil.

Poor diddums - offended by a blog. You'd better stay off the internet. Some people can be terribly infra dig.

Finally, how about discussing some of the matters of substance I raise? Or don't you have the ability?

Sarah Williams said...

Here, here! Hoorah for the vole!