Sod off, oiks

We're in the deepest recession since the 1930s. School funding has been cut. The national health service is being dismantled. Social services are being outsourced. Libraries are being closed. Environmental protection is being abandoned.

But there's always room for tax cuts: and the rich are having their taxes cut.

That's what you get when you elect a government of multimillionaires. It's not just that they don't give a shit about you (which they don't): they want to smear it in your face.

Will the cut help the economy? No: they'll keep their cash overseas anyway. Angry now.

Snow train to Georgia

OK, terrible pun, I know. Yesterday's weather forecast promised 10-20cms of snow overnight, and I kept waking up to look out of the window, so excited was I, only to be disappointed each time. Luckily, a few cms fell this morning and The Dark Place doesn't look as surly as usual.

In other news, the coalition's falling apart as the Daily Telegraph tries to pull it to pieces. This very rightwing newspaper has always hated the Lib Dems and distrusts Cameron, so it despatched pretty female journalists disguised as constituents to the offices of various susceptible Liberal Democrat ministers. Lo and behold, they revealed that Lib Dems don't like or trust what their Conservative colleagues are up to, and Vince Cable said some true but undiplomatic things about Rupert Murdoch.

Ho hum. It's not a great day for democracy: it means that any MP will no longer say what they think to their own constituents, because they might be undercover journalists. Replacing Vince Cable with a Tory bastard (Jeremy H-h-hunt) means that Murdoch's bid to dominate Britain's airwaves will probably be waved through, so that's bad too. But at least it'll be harder to maintain the coalition.

More mischievously, it means that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is left between a rock and a hard place. As an economic conservative he's trapped between the Tories - whom he strongly resembles - and his own party, which is largely to the left of him. Does he stay with his tribe or move closer to his spiritual home with the other privileged millionaire neoliberals?

Moore, the Berwickshire MP, describes the increase in tuition fees to a maximum £9,000 as "the biggest, ugliest, most horrific thing in all of this … a car crash, a train wreck".

Speaking to reporters posing as constituents, Moore said: "I signed a pledge that promised not to do this. I've just done the worst crime a politician can commit, the reason most folk distrust us as a breed. I've had to break a pledge and very, very publicly."

Moore said the move was "deeply damaging" to Lib Dems, who had promised to abolish fees, but he added: "What we've all had to weigh up is the greater sense of what the coalition is about." He added that Conservative rightwingers "hate us with a passion".

Splendid.

Oh yes: some Uppal news. I wrote to him asking him to inquire about the moronic decision to remove scientists from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He hasn't advanced an opinion either way, but has written to the Home Secretary for clarification.

Going off-message

Vince Cable, with his usual charm, has let slip the real reasons why every student in the country will have to pay £9000 per year for a worse education than they currently receive:

Vince Cable has claimed that the government effectively was held to ransom on tuition fees, as a group of elite universities would have “gone private” if the cap had not been raised.

Speaking at a conference in Manchester yesterday, the business secretary added that he does not know whether the proposed cap of £9,000 a year will be enough to “head off” those considering opting out of state financial support.

“One of the reasons we are [raising the fee cap] is precisely to head off Oxford, Cambridge, the London School of Economics, University College London and a few others from going private,” he is reported to have said in a speech at the annual conference of the Girls’ Schools Association.

“If we had not opened up the system, they would have a very strong incentive to do so.”

Mr Cable is also reported to have told delegates at the conference that “a lot of universities are effectively broke” and that “if they were in the private sector they would have been filing for bankruptcy”.

“Various arrangements have been cobbled together to keep them going, and we can’t continue to do that,” he said.

Dancing while Rome burns

Vince Cable - who should be quite busy given he's the Secretary of State for Business - has found time to appear on Strictly Come Dancing's Christmas Special.

This is wonderful news. A government minister who is personally responsible for a full-frontal onslaught on the poor and hard-working - and publicly promised to abolish student fees but then more than doubled them - is offering himself up for judgement on a low-rent game show. It's a bit pathetic, but it's the closest we'll get to a referendum on him.

So - I suggest a boycott of his dances. Everybody switch off every time Nero Vince steps onto the dance floor. Don't vote for him: imagine the screen as the display flashes up a big fat zero - or perhaps 1 from his wife.

Can you imagine Stafford Cripps, Attlee, Disraeli or Gladstone taking time off from governing to do this? Especially in a time of hardship?

Let the mockery commence.

Vincit Omnia

Vince Cable is the expert economist Liberal Democrat who wasn't made Chancellor when they went into coalition with the Tories. The job went instead to Gideon George Osborne, who hasn't a single qualification in the field and who has never worked outside politics.

Vince is bored by his job in the Business Department, and uncomfortable in alliance with the Tory Scum.

Thankfully, he's lashed out today at overpaid Vice-Chancellors of universities. Yes, the pay gap between company directors and workers is at record levels (85 times average shopfloor earnings now) but he can't do much about that.

Obviously, I wouldn't dream of offering an opinion on whether or not there's an inverse relationship between the competence, intellectual vision and management skills of my dear leader and her wages. I'll just point out that, with inflation taken into account, I've taken a pay cut and she very much hasn't. As to the bonus scheme for upper management… but no, this is a family blog.

I'll just leave you with Vince's words:

The business secretary, Vince Cable, has launched a scathing attack on university vice-chancellors over their generous pay packages, accusing them of being out of step with reality and having little sense of the "self-sacrifice" needed in the current climate.

The Liberal Democat said he had been "taken aback" to discover thatsalaries had risen last year by more than 10% and the government was sending a "very strong signal" that high awards were unacceptable at a time of a funding crisis in the sector. 

"There is some gap between reality and expectations in some of those institutions and although it is not our job to control pay – it is an independent mechanism – we want to signal to them that there has got to be some restraint."

Contrasting the attitude of the university heads with that of managers in the private sector, where some were taking pay cuts to help keep their firms afloat, he said: "I just get absolutely no sense in the university sector that there is the same degree of realism and of self-sacrifice which is going to have to happen if we are going to preserve the quality of university education. There is clearly salary escalation at the top level that bears no relation to the underlying economics of the country."

Back in Stumville

I'm now back in Wolverhampton. How the very sentence thrills me. What is good is finding more presents from Santa Amazon in my office. In particular, Vince Cable's The Storm, his centrist analysis of the current financial disaster. (keep paying those fees, kids. Vole needs books). It's too rightwing for me, but then most things are.

I also got Stile Antico's anthology of Middle Ages/Renaissance settings of the Song of Songs (the erotic stuff that somehow got into the Bible - hear some on that link). I know this will bore or befuddle many of you, but I love all sorts of music, and Lassus, Palestrina et al. are up there with the Field Mice and Elastica in terms of genius. (I'm joking: you can't compare them). They're all good, but Stile Antico sing works of genius staggeringly well. Only The Sixteen (what a stunningly arrogant and, dammit, justified name) and the Tallis Scholars compete on that particular and rarefied playing field.

And so to bed

Well, not quite. But I am going home now. I only ordered one book today (Vince Cable's The Storm), received Season one of the original Star Trek (for work, of course) and received the news that I don't have to appear in court tomorrow. This is always good to hear - my reign of terror continues.

Actually, I don't have to give evidence in a case because the defence have accepted my statement without question. It's true: I did fly in from Krypton, land on the hoodlum's head, melt his knife with laser eyes then delivered him to the Chief of Police with a tortured pun (actually, that last bit's quite true to life). I still have to attend the crown court for the more serious charges so I'll still get to shout 'You want the truth? You can't handle the truth', though I've never seen the whole film because the sight of Tom Cruise makes me grind my teeth and be randomly cruel to babies.