Sound and fury, signifying nothing

It was the slogan of the election if you recall. “I agree with Nick”. After last week’s shambles at Prime Minister’s Questions, you can’t find anybody who’s going to go with that one.

The level of the tea boy’s reputation is going down quicker than a Cumbrian reservoir for, after two months of hanging around with his mate, trying not to look bewildered, the truth is out. He really is bewildered. And dangerously so.

Question time in the Commons may look as if it’s just a bit of pointless knockabout theatre, but it’s one of the very few forums where the government of the day is held accountable, and where its views go on the record. It’s not like making an off the cuff comment on television that you retract in a press release later, it’s an arena where what you say, goes. Never more is that true than in matters of warfare.

So, after around a quarter of an hour of general humiliation for Clegg, who clearly hadn’t got the foggiest – no wonder they’re finishing “Last of the Sumer Wine” – he finally lost his rag and accused the previous government of waging “an illegal war” in Iraq. Nice that Clegg has decided to become judge, jury and executioner on a decision that has to be made elsewhere and by people who actually know what they’re talking about.

Sadly though, that isn’t the end of it, for as Deputy PM – God help us, how did we get into that kind of mess? – his allegations have weight. Some are suggesting that they use his words as the basis for some kind of legal action given the government of the day has declared the war to be illegal, an apparent admission of guilt for many. Which means that an out of his depth politician throwing a tantrum could end up putting former ministers, forces personnel and ordinary servicemen up on trial for war crimes.

The government issued strenuous denials that Clegg’s declarations were actually the views of the coalition, but his performance thus far makes John Prescott look like Gladstone. The tea boy has been promoted about 250 levels above his appropriate pay grade, somewhere below minimum wage, and needs removing from office. Except they can’t can they, because the Tories are currently hiding behind him and Cable who offer some vestige of cover for their version of slash and burn economics that are designed to destroy the welfare state even more ruthlessly than Thatcher massacred the unions.

But we won’t forget the guilty men on an ego trip in government cars when the chance comes round to vote them out. And let’s not be too harsh on Clegg for in the longer term, he may have done us all a great service, for he might finally awaken us from the mistaken belief that voting in a general election is exactly the same as voting for an X-factor winner. That, after all, was the criteria on which he managed to shore up the Liberal voter, that he was the new, young, clean cut, exciting pretender on the stage with a winning smile and a way with a one liner put down. And yes, if he were voting for somebody to read the weather forecast on Orkney TV, I’m sure he’s have been a fine choice.

Sadly, we were actually voting for somebody with the intelligence, vision and gravitas to lead the country through tough times. Instead, we got the government that nobody wanted which is, day after day, making it perfectly clear that we really ought to invest a bit more thought in choosing our leader next time. And if Clegg gets us to do that, then he hasn’t been all bad. Which will represent some achievement considering what he’s done so far.

Follow the money

This deficit business. Don’t you think it’s weird that we have one, yet so do the French, the Spanish, the Germans, the Americans, the Italians, the Irish, the Greeks, and most of the rest of the western world, in spite of the fact that we’ve all had governments of differing philosophies, in power for different lengths of time and with differing attitudes towards public spending and taxation?

Given Cameroon and the tea boy keep insisting upon the fact that the reason we’re in the mess we are was because of Labour’s profligate spending, surely those nations that didn’t have Labour in charge and had specifically right wing governments – eight years of Bush the baboon for instance – and hardly any public sector on which to lavish fortunes should be in infinitely better shape?

And yet they’re not. As I say, odd.

Yet not. Because the reason we’re all in the mess together was because of the banks. Remember a couple of years back when they went into meltdown and then held a gun to the head of the world’s economies, saying that if you let us die, we take you down as well? That’s where the deficit came from, because of the money that had to be pumped into failed institutions, that had to be injected into otherwise crippled economies, that had to be made available to ensure liquidity.

Remember in this country the way we had to give the kiss of life to Northern Rock and the rest, a process that was repeated around the globe? That’s where our deficit came from, and where the rest of it came from.

So why then are we getting rid it of by slashing public spending, by following a policy that will see children going to schools that are falling down around them, that has pensioners having to find £8billion over the coming years thanks to the VAT increase, that will see the NHS privatised?

Why aren’t we taking back the money – our money – from the banks? Banking is bizarrely, embarrassingly, one of the few growth sectors in this economy. Bonuses are beginning to come back for those at the top end – not the normal workers of course - profits are being made, and it’s like nothing ever happened.

What about taxing all bank profits and bank bonuses at 100% until the deficit is recouped? After all, Barclays, for instance, made profits of £1.8bn in the first quarter of 2010. At that rate, wouldn’t take us that long to get the bulk of it back would it? Never mind the NatWest sending volunteers out to paint cricket pitches green or whatever those idiots are doing in the adverts, give us our bloody money back. And then we might be able to keep hospitals open, rather than selling them off.

It’s pretty obvious really, I can’t think why it is that Saint Vince Cableanduseless hasn’t thought of it. Unless the government has a specific agenda that it wants to push under cover of the “crisis”. And they’re doing it well, because the public appears to be feeling virtuous that they’re helping to get the nation’s finances back in order. As Goebbels demonstrated, there is nothing so successful in propaganda terms as the big lie, and as a former - and current - PR man, Cameroon knows that better than anyone.

The biggest lie sits beneath the surface, the idea that the cuts are for the greater good. They’re not. They’re to change the face of this country, to smash the state’s role in the economy and in so doing ultimately create a situation where the need for tax revenues will be massively reduced.

The end game here is to bring the top rate down, perhaps as far as 30%, and who gives a damn if the schools and the hospitals are crap. Those at the top end can simply opt out and use their hugely increased pay packets to go private. Won’t we all feel virtuous then, when we’ve washed away a century of moving towards greater equality, an equality which is easy to give away, but much harder to recapture.

Where does that highway go to?

I was interested to hear Dick Clameron calling for the public to offer solutions to reducing the deficit on Thursday during his visit to a children’s hospital – presumably he was there because they’re the next generation whose vote he has any hope of getting in the distant future, since they’ll be the only group with no memory of the Pinnochic tendencies revealed since the election.


While this might be the shortest time within which any government has ever run out of ideas, and certainly the first time one has admitted it, let’s welcome this once in a lifetime – this is not my beautiful government – opportunity to help shape the future. They’re especially keen on telling us what we can do to help, so in a spirit of mutual scales from the eyes spring cleaning, let us the people turn our eyes towards what they can do for us.


So let us drag the Westminster gang away from London. Let’s establish a parliament in a disused factory in Birmingham – there’s going to be plenty of them in the next few months. After all, if a change of use for business premises is good enough for a free school, it’s good enough for the government. With plenty of office space going spare in the area too, it’ll be far cheaper than paying for prime plots of land in Westminster.


With the MPs congregated in the midlands, more will be in closer proximity to their constituencies, getting rid of the need for a second home. Expenses for second homes will of course be abolished anyway – after all, it’s only housing benefit by another name, and we all know how disgusting housing benefit is don’t we? In addition, we’ll abolish all MP expenses, because the public finances can’t afford to pay them.
In the same vein, both Downing Street and Chequers will be sold off, or used as tourist attractions, because we all know how the Prime Minister loves to don a hairshirt in the hothouse glare of publicity. It’s a public school thing. He’ll move into a maisonette in Chelmsley Wood.


Those MPs who do need to rent accommodation in Birmingham at their own expense will find plenty of opportunities to move into sink estates, paying low rents as they live six or eight to a house, as those living high on the hog of welfare benefits so often do. A few of them might even be encouraged to indulge in local community activities such as instigating teenage pregnancies in order to secure the one remaining universal benefit in order to help make ends meet.


Radically, MPs will also only be allowed to take one public sector salary, and that will be the salary for being an MP. No ministerial salaries. All MPs will get the same salary because we are all in it together. We know public sector pay is destroying the country, so they will be only too glad to help in this fashion.


With Westminster empty, we will open up the Lords and the Commons as a museum – no great change with the Lords of course. Tourists will flock to the historic site, thus bring in loads of money to the country’s battered economy. Alternatively, we can use them as a hostel for some of the thousands who will be made homeless under the new housing benefit system. After all, we’re all in it together.