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Blog of the Season and a Happy New Blog. 2005. A promising year. (I`m still promising after all these years). A year in which we dedicate ourselves to your delight and promise anything you want, “as resources allow”, and of course without Yob Behaviour, booze, salt or sugar.
The sixteen weeks before polling day will be weeks of devotion and loyalty to Tony/Gordon (whoever`s uppermost), good behaviour on my part, and an absolute refusal to say anything critical about Labour, New, Old or Middle-aged.
In short, total boredom. I will concentrate on Grimsby, Grimsby, and more Grimsby. I`ll denounce the Conservatives as slashing public services to cut taxes for the rich and the Liberals as offering impracticalities which they`ll never have to implement because they won`t be in power. Though if they ever are they`ll act as they have in North East Lincolnshire: slashing and burning everything that improves life, from lavatories and libraries to youth clubs, facilities for single mums and privatising what`s left. The council houses. Now the schools. Next the Town Hall.
Voter give an honest curse. Defend the bad against far worse. But look at the big picture, not the pimples.
But before this pall of loyalty descends like rigor mortis there are one or two things to get off my chest.
(1) If Alistair Campbell had still been running the country Tony would have been back from Egypt on 27 December and in afflicted Commonwealth countries like Sri Lanka and the Maldives, with a bale of money and a few thousand Marines on the 28th. Instead he`s risked the same reaction Jim Callaghan got coming back from Guadeloupe in January 1979 and got the worst of both worlds. He came back but not early enough. Won`t do lad.
(2) We`re wasting time on shop window Bills, like ID Cards, tough anti-crime and terrorism measures, which won`t work. Except to create an atmosphere of fear to help the government, as it did Bush. Why was none of this necessary when the IRA was a threat? It was far more dangerous than Al Queda could ever be. And why can we only have Rambos as Home Secretaries?
(3) Why doesn`t John Prescott stop bullying, bribing, and bamboozling council estates to force them to privatise in the run-up to the election when we need their support?
(4) Can we call in the UN Peace Force to police a Downing Street Peace Process?
(5) Can we have a Labour Party Manifesto not a Blairifesto? Tony wants more emphasis on public service reform (who needs it?), choice (where we need better services), competition, city academies, Beacons and Foundation Hospitals we don`t need. It`s all about meritocracy while the under-privileged get peanuts, plus free lectures on yobbery. Labour should help the needy, the poor and the under-privileged, not lecture them on their behaviour, diet, smacking and general yobbery. We should help the poor and needy, not lecture them on their diet, smoking and behaviour.
(6) Why do we sit in the middle of every road driving the Lib/Cons to the extremes rather than developing a decent Labour programme of redistribution, fairness, faster economic growth, effective regulation of big companies and higher public spending to get the improvement in public services the people put us in power to do sooner and faster. Elections are about winning votes and enthusing people about the programme, not stitching together a catch-all collection of populist policies on asylum, crime and fear with a few happy handouts like Gordon`s baby bonus. We`re contemptuous of the electorate. It will reduce them to boredom. Try a bit of socialism, real full employment and worker empowerment to enthuse the Party. We know Labour Government works. So it`s time for it to actually do something.
(7) Go for growth, Gordon. You`ve done well and we`ve been lucky so far. Yet the economic drive from rising consumer spending and greater public spending is petering out, manufacturing is still declining, the trade balance is bad and if we don`t get more growth we`ll need to raise taxes and borrowing. The Bank of England is busily fighting inflation, a dead enemy, and house prices which are not part of its brief. It`s kept interest rates too high, double those of our competitors and is shoring up an overvalued pound which must come down with the dollar to preserve our trade and close the deficit if we`re to build a better future.
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A few things there for Tony to read and learn. I`ll be writing my own personal manifesto to help him further. But apart from such little problems, it`s onward to victory. The march of the living dead.
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