David Copperfield...err...Cameron in Hard Times

So Dave is going to speak this afternoon. He is going to tell us about hard times. Last week Gordon Brown went all Dickensian on us with this poorhouses for young parents living off the state. Wonder if Dave will go all Dickensian, if so:

"what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the mind of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them."*

Yeah I want the facts that the school in Dickens's Coketown were going to get. I want fact about what you are planning to do, let's call them policy. Since Dave became leader the Tories have been somewhat lacking in these cold, hard policy decisions based on fact. What his mate George told us yesterday was that even those on £7,000 below the average wage in this nation are going to have to bear the brunt of the last Government's failings and take a pay freeze. We are indeed in hard times.

One also has to wonder is Dave really has listened. Again I'll dig into Dickens's work:

"Look how we live, an' wheer we live, an' in what numbers, an' by what chances, an' wi' what sameness; and look how the mills is awlus a-goin', and how they never works us no nigher to onny distant object-'ceptin awlus Death. Look how you considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi' your deputations to Secretaries o' State 'bout us, and how yo are awlus right, and how we are awlus wrong, and never had'n no reason in us sin ever we were born. Look how this ha' growen an' growen sir, bigger an' bigger, broader an' broader, harder an' harder, fro year to year, fro generation unto generation. Who can look on't sir, and fairly tell a man 'tis not a muddle?"

Well Dave, are you going to sort out that muddle? Have you got a grand idea? Have you considered the poor or just those at the richest end of the spectrum? It appears you are still wanting to grant benefits after death to the super rich, yet seem to struggle a great deal to find an answer to the people at the other end. Have you seen how they live, where they live? Have you seen how they are always grafting to try and put food on the table. Suffering more these days as prices outstrip the pay which has been frozen behind a price index which doesn't reflect their standard of living?

You are considering a 20% VAT rate, so bang, there goes another disproportionate amount of the poor's income. They won't be having an accountant going through what they purchase to try and claim VAT back on certain items. They will be paying what they have to, because they need the things that VAT is added to. Their food, their clothes, their fuel bills. Even more so if you are freezing their rate of pay as well.

We live and see what Dickensian future Dave will take.

* All quotes from Hard Times by Charles Dickens.