Something worthwhile?

The new administration has done something worthwhile. Or it will if it follows through with it You might say it has justified it’s existence.

More than the previous administration did during its entire tenure anyway.

What? - You may ask.

They are to abolish New Labour’s fascist ID card system and the sinister national Identity Register.

Let's hope they make moves towards dismantling the system designed to nationally track all under 18s too.

Further promising indications towards the restoration personal liberties and freedoms are that they are considering making changes to how the National DNA database is administered and functions.

One hopes that before too long there will be a move to purge the records of innocent people that Labour were so keen to collect. The police never kept innocent people’s fingerprints, elimination prints were disposed of after use. There is no reason why DNA can not be treated the same and it might make people more willing to provide it for elimination purposes if they knew it would be disposed of after.

It looks as if the biometric passport may also go the way of all flesh and public CCTV cameras may be reigned back to some extent.

If the coalition administration actually manages to deliver on any of these it establishes it as more concerned for the citizen’s liberty and rights than the previous authoritarian Labour administration.

Last one out the box close the lid

What a difference a day makes - as the song goes.

It seems the UK is to have a coalition government.

Things looked pretty bad over the last day or so. This by contrast to that seems not quite so worrying.

We are seeing a hint of light at the end of the tunnel and hoping against hope it is not the 17:15 to Cambridge and we are not all about to become the stuffed toy on the front of the dust cart, to mix and match metaphors.

Suddenly being polite and reasonable seems to be the order of the day. I do wonder about the timing of Gordon Brown's resignation and if it's timing was designed to strain the chances of a Liberal Democrat/Progressive Conservative Coalition.

Suddenly everyone is busy saying what a statesman he was as if he was dead, I guess he is politically - so I shall refrain from mentioning any inconvenient truths, the gold reserve or pachyderms quietly milling about in the corner of the room.

Experience suggests that the chances are a coalition is likely to come apart at the seams. Driven apart by internal fault lines when push really comes to shove - look at the Lib-Lab pact. Things are certainly going to get difficult before they get any easier, are the Lib Dems up to it?

Still maybe Cameron and Clegg are really serious about government in the national interest and may really be able to drag enough of their parties along with them.

One way they could save a huge amount of money would be to demand Thatcher's negotiated payments discount back from the EU that Blair blithely gave away. Maybe ask for a bigger one of their own.

The UK pays a disproportionately large amount in to the EU to pay for civic improvements in the likes of Portugal and allow French farmers to continue to live in the manner to which they have become accustomed, etc.

Not likely to happen one suspects what with Nick being a Europhile, still it would plug a big hole in the nation's finances.

Maybe we’ll get the best of both Liberal Democrat and Conservative policies and less useful ones will somehow cancel each other out.. Keeping each other honest with each party will acting like the other’s watchdog.

Maybe to save money they will have to hold back the expansion of the state and buy us some breathing space. Maybe some of them will actually even want to do that. Shame that the Liberal Democrats, like Labour and in favour of robbing the dead in the form of low thresholds on inheritance tax. Penalising the south disproportioantely.

I am keeping my fingers crossed - but I am also keeping an umbrella handy against the chance flying pigs coming home to roost turn out to have minimal bowel control.

Goodness knows we need politicians to get over confusing the national interest with their party's interest or even their own personal interest. The thought of them actually doing it seems almost too much to hope for or to actually believe.

Still, they say a cynic is a disappointed optimist, It seems there is a tiny bit of optimist left in me that can still occasionally and probably briefly surface...

It’s only a tiny ‘Obama moment’ of hope that I’ll probably pay for later.

Jumped or pushed?

Well – He of the clunking fist, the old lady dissing, Gordon Brown himself is offering to resign, for the good of his party.

And all the pundits are going “Really!?!” amazed - at least the CNN ones seem to be.

How is this anything other than to be expected?

Gordon knows perfectly well that he has, whatever Labour spin MDs may try to say, led his party to a pretty bad, not to put too fine a point on it, defeat.

The only thing that kept the “dead man walking” actually walking, were the electric shocks supplied by the Dark Lord and puppet master himself – Madleson.

Really it was a choice of jump or be pushed.

Someone had to be the fall guy for what they could see was coming. The Labour leadership was a poisoned chalice no one sane wanted before the election... once they decided they had little chance of an outright victory.

They must all have been thinking “Let's fight like hell for what seats we can save, let Gordon take the bullet and maybe let Dave Cameron make himself seriously unpopular trying to sort the mess we made out - Back in 5 years time”.

It didn’t work out quite like that and now it is a real mess.

Labour clearly had no chance of hooking up with the Liberal Democrats while Gordon was in nominal charge, given his reported relationship with Nick Clegg. Could not make a majority with the Liberals either, not without minority Nationalist parties - and that would be an unstable mess that would barely have any majority anyway.

Maybe on alternate wednesdays if they were lucky.

Unless the Liberals and Conservatives can come up with something that is not Schizophrenic any coalition they make will not be able to last, or function effectively either.

Maybe what we really need is a general election?

Janus

There is something inherently dishonest about the Liberal Democrat's current attempt to appeal to voters.

They are desperate to keep facing in both directions and be all things to all people, including new.

Nick Clegg and his advisors are perfectly well aware that for many disaffected Conservative and Labour supporters an x in their box is a protest vote against their own parties.

Many disaffected Conservative supporters could never bring themselves to vote Labour, but feel it is important to vote, so they vote Liberal, less so in a general election that in Local elections, but they definitely do it.

The same holds true for disaffected Labour supporters. They also can convince themselves that the Liberal Democrats are enough like Labour to vote for them.

So Nick Clegg's dilemma is he needs support from both disaffected Conservative and disaffected Labour supporters. To do this he has to play coy with who and what the Liberal Democratic Party are.

Even today on the eve of the election when directly asked Nick still desperately avoids answering that question as to who he might support in a hung parliament.

He needs Conservative Supporters to see him as practically Conservative and a potential partner to a Hung Parliament Conservative Government and Labour Supporters to see him as practically Labour and a likely potential partner in a possible hung pearliest Labour government.

Obviously the two positions are mutually exclusive. One group of supporters that he is so assiduously attempting to woo are going to be severely disappointed if there is a hung parliament.

Nick Clegg of course wants to put off betraying them and blowing his carefully implied political fellowship until after they have voted for him and it is too late.

If he can get his hands on power just once for just long enough he can push for whatever change in the electoral system most favours his own party at the expense of the others and possibly the UK too.

The Liberal party is dreaming being serious contenders - for the fist time since the Great War.

Oh... remember how sanctimonious Nick Clegg was over Gordon Brown's Gillian Duffy open mike gaff? He had his own moment, maybe he should have been a little less self satisfied about Gordon's


Janus, or Ianus, was the god of gates, doors & doorways, bridges and passages of beginnings and endings. He was also the god of the entrance of the home.