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.

Can People Not Give Impartial Advice?

One thing I hate about the American Family Association (AFA) is that they seem incapable of expecting anyone to give impartial advise. Therefore it was sadly no surprise that their latest outcry came to my ears.

Kevin Jennings, is the head of the White Houses Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. 21 years ago he told a student that if he was having a relationship with an older man, he should be careful to use a condom. Now for starters surely that is sound and sage advise, even if the young man were already sexually active with other men. As it was it was a provision for the future.

AFA president Tim Wildmon said Jennings "actively advances a radical homosexual agenda in America’s public school system under the guise of promoting anti-bullying policies".

Adding: "Are we to believe Kevin Jennings will fairly treat Christians who believe homosexuality is wrong? Students of faith will hardly be safe from bullying and intimidation in any school that listens to him. It’s time for the Obama administration to demand his resignation."

Actually I would suspect that he would be able to fairly treat Christians, just because a man gives health care advise to a group who's lifestyle you don't agree with doesn't mean he will also be able to consider the opinions of those you do. Each case, each pupil is an individual. If anyone in authority failed to recognise that and treat them all the same they are the ones that will hardly be keeping the child safe. Any teacher, even those in Christian schools in the states will be able to tell you that each is unique an individual and needs leading on their own path. Indeed are we not all 'fearfully and wonderfully made'?

Just because you at the AFA cannot remain impartial doesn't mean that other's can't. Therefore I think you accusation should be pointed back at you.

Are we to believe the AFA will fairly treat individuals who believe the AFA is wrong? Students of a homosexual nature will hardly be safe from bullying and intimidation in any school that listens to them. It’s time for the AFA to behave with more discretion.

Swine Flu Hits Linlithgow Academy

Almost a quarter (300) pupils at Linlithgow Academy have called in sick over the last few days, 135 of these have shown flu like symptoms, over 100 are suspected of having swine flu. At Linlithgow Primary School which adjoins the campus a further 40 pupils out of a roll of 415 are off sick.

All parents of both schools have been written to and the council is following Government advise at this time and not shutting the schools. The high incidence rate may be the indication of a fresh cluster developing as the weather took a sudden turn for the colder over the last few days. Similar to the one in Dunoon in the first series of outbreaks.

West Lothian Council's director of education Gordon Ford said:

"We are following government guidance on managing this outbreak and there are no plans to close schools at this time, and all children who are not showing symptoms should continue to attend as normal.

"School closures will only be considered in exceptional circumstances, for example, if enough staff are off sick to mean that we cannot safely open the school. We will alert parents and carers if this were to happen."

And the director of public health for NHS Lothian Dr Allison McCallum added:

"We are working closely with West Lothian Council following reports of a number of pupils with flu-like symptoms in the Linlithgow area. This situation is being closely monitored."

Everyone in the area is encouraged maintain good personal hygiene to help prevent the spread of germs.

From the NHS page describing Swine Flu symptoms:

If you or a member of your family has a fever or high temperature (over 38°C/100.4°F) and two or more of the following symptoms, you may have swine flu:

• unusual tiredness,
• headache,
• runny nose,
• sore throat,
• shortness of breath or cough,
• loss of appetite,
• aching muscles,
• diarrhoea or vomiting.

Please check the page and follow the advise on the Scottish Government website if you are covered by the above.

It's not the Champagne that is the Story

I agree with Mark who reckoned this morning that the fact that David Cameron had a full champagne flute in his hand last night at a Spectator fringe event was largely a non-story. At least I agree that supping the champagne in itself is a non-story, I trust it was a decent example of the vintner's art.

What made the whole thing a story is that the Tories have been trying, and failing, to control the media agenda at this, which for them, is a crunch conference.It is the conference before a General Election and as a party looking to take over the UK the Conservatives want to get their message across. Yet they are trying to do just what Labour did in the run up to 1997 and thereafter control the beast that is the fourth estate.

A flute of champagne at a Conservative Party Conference would never have been a front page headline and full page story apart from the fact that Eric Pickles had ordered, yes the Tories can be authoritarian too, all the front bench spokespeople not to be seen with champagne. The Alistair Campbell impersonation that the Tory media machine is attempting is where the story actually lies.However, that media machine is failing whole heartedly. Last night on Channel Four news the Tory Conference story was Ben Summerskill, director of Stonewall not turning up at the LGBTory Conference Pride event, it was backed up by Stephen Fry being interviewed about the open letter that was sent. The morning the papers ran with the champagne storied and Europe continues to hang like the sword of Damocles over the whole shebang. We've all seen the panels on Newsnight in which the PPCs are even not allowed to say 'anything' when the Europe question is posed, how different from the Lib Dems at Bournemouth.

Even when it comes to policy they are seen as stealing and then not too well. Millennium Elephant points out the plagarism of a poor student that Osborne has perpetrated to fill the void of a lack of substantive Economic ideas that his party had before the crunch started to bite. Like any mediocre student he went to the library and looked up what the master had written, taken some key points out of it, tried to pass it off as his own work, but fell short as the whole thing doesn't fit right together. The comments in the side when Osborne receives his work back would probably say 'you have grasped some of the key principles but failed to understand the mechanics behind them to create a coherent, comprehensive answer'.

As Millennium wrote:

"At the Liberal Democrat conference, just a fortnight ago, we were having debates and arguments and even out-and-out scraps about which of our MANY well-established, long-standing, democratically approved, POPULAR policies we could STILL AFFORD to place front and centre in a manifesto.

"It was PAINFUL. It was DIFFICULT. It was what REAL "tough choices" actually looks like.

"The Conservatories, by contrast, have NOTHING.

"There are NO policies that they have had to say "we can't do that"; there were NO polices there in the first place."

So while the age of spin spins inexplicably out of control under the Conservative masters the lesson learnt from that flute is that the media is an uncontrollable as the bubbles in the glass. They will always be there ready for the fresh excitement of being unleashed. While you think you have control as you hold the glass however, the bubbles themselves will do whatever they want.

Jewish Letter to Cameron

Yesterday I covered the anti-homophobes letter from amongst others Stephen Fry, Partick Stewart, Eddie Izzard and Jo Brand. Today there is news that the he president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Vivian Wineman, has also sent a letter to the Conservative leader over his alliance with far-right groups in Poland and Latvia.

There is rising concern about just what some of the Tories partners stand for. In the same way that under the gloss that Nick Griffen likes to put on the BNP there is a lot of concern about the core values of what he party actually stands for. We're well aware of the underlying message that the far right parties in our own country have, yet the so-called new social liberalism that the Conservatives want to portray turned their back on the central right parties in Europe and heading off to find more extreme colleagues to form a group.

This is the party that all the while is claiming to bring a new progressivism, but over at over at this conference is defending Poland and Latvia for being less progressive. Well there are some in those countries that are looking to be progressive but the Tories haven't aligned with them, they have gone with the far right wing. They have partnered up with those that have banned the right for Gay Pride marches to take place in Latvia, opposed gay rights from the EU convention of Human Rights to be ratified, that celebrate the Waffen-SS in annual parades.

It truly is a case of double speak and the Conservatives are trying to put the con into their answers by denying some of the stuff that these leaders are doing and are saying. Zile has tried to defend himself by saying it was back in WWII. Wrong! Look at the violence meted out on Government orders to a peaceful Gay Pride event but a few years ago. This is real, this is current and the Conservatives are being apologists for it, and then some, much as Chamberlain was for the Germans in the late 30s.

Fry and Stonewell Boss Write and Walk from New 'Gay Friendly' Tories

Stephen Fry, along with other celebrities including Patrick Stewart, Eddie Izzard and Jo Brand has signed an open letter calling on the Tories to distance themselves from some of their new European allies. One of whom Michal Kaminski addressed a fringe event at the Tory party conference on the same day that LGBTory were to hold a first ever Conservative Conference Pride event on Manchester's Canal Street.

The letter said:

"It is not just that your new Polish allies oppose gay marriage and adoption but that their vile rhetoric - branding homosexuality as a 'pathology', gays as 'perverts', and describing 'the affirmation of homosexuality' as 'the downfall of civilisation' - was used to whip up hate during their election campaign.

"Your Party's decision to host an LGBT event at conference is a good step in the right direction.

"But it will seem empty - a two faced gesture - if in the same week you fawn over allies whose homophobia has no place in modern Manchester, in modern Britain, or in Europe."

Speaking on Channel 4 News Fry said that the Tories were no longer the nasty party, but that he wasn't saying he would vote Tory or that he wouldn't but that the time had come for such loveless, misguided homophobia to be wiped out.

To have been speaking at the event was gay rights campaign group Stonewall's director Ben Summerskill. But he has dramatically refused to turn up boycotting the event at the last minute. He said:

"There is no doubt the progress that has been made in the last couple of years has genuinely been historic. It would churlish of anyone not to welcome the apology a couple of months ago over Section 28," said Summerskill.

"But the event tonight has been overshadowed by the presence, not just at conference but on the same platform as some senior members of the party, of people of such extreme and offensive views.

"And certainly there are people I've spoken to at the conference today, not just gay people but Jewish delegates as well, who share that viewpoint."

Asked to elaborate by channel 4 political commentator Cathy Newman on the reasons why he wasn't going to turn up at an event he was billed as the star speaker, Mr Summerskill said:

"You would have to draw your own conclusions about that."

Looks like the unchangeable spots of a leopard are starting to appear through all the slap that has been applied to deal with the public spotlight. Charles Tannock even had the opportunity live on Channel 4 news to condemn the homophobic and anti-Semitic nature of some of the Tory's new colleagues but denied they had ever held such views.

One final thought for Eric Pickles, if this is a sign of progression from the Conservative party, it is not just a cigarette paper between your position and mine as a Liberal Democrat. It may be a full fleet transporting Rizla papers worth.

I Don't Like Twitter...Don't Panic! Just Song Lyrics

Miss Rigg has written her own lyrics and asked rather nicely where my blogger's version of a Boomtown Rat's classic is. She only gave us a sneak peak seeing as mine is going to be a journey song of a transformation and I'm still working on it here is the first verse and first chorus, more to follow.

 

There's blue screen of death on my VDU

I don't know what to do.

And EARS crashed the system not an hour ago

I'm feeling such a fool.

But the PPC just the other day

Told me I had to get online

But I don't see the reason,

For there is no reason.

For anyone to follow me.

 

Tell me why,

I don't like Twitter,

Tell me why,

I don't like Twitter,

Tell me why,

I don't like Twitter

I wanna shoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oot the whole thing down

To be continued