Small acorns
Gordon Brown has finally done something right: This morning he’s declined to appear on Victoria Derbyshire’s racist and psycho magnet on Five Live.
Is this a sign of a turnaround in the Prime Minister’s fortunes? Does his refusal to pander to the forces of anti-intellectualism mark the emergence of a more thoughtful and considerate leader?
Posted on April 28th, 2008 at 9:18 am
| See also • Jane Garvey: Harbinger of the Dark Ages • David Miliband: A beacon of hope • More questions than answers |
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Filed under Bread and circuses, Brown |
Thoughtful and considerate? How about callous and depraved? For at the same time as the news media swirl with the 10p tax imbroglio, our godforsaken PM is backing a poverty initiative in Nottingham; in a video message he says,
“This new initiative will help young mothers do the best for their children, reduce child poverty and increase opportunity in the early and teenage years.
“Intervening early before problems develop is vital to helping all children reach their full potential, giving them every opportunity to achieve the best for themselves and then go on and reproduce that for their own families - a virtuous circle of aspiration and achievement replacing an inter-generational cycle of low expectation and wasted talent.”
Okay - did you spot it, the yawning, Brobdingnagian gulf of logic that lies between the decision to axe the 10p tax rate (and thereby pushing thousands of lowpaid further towards financial disaster) and this poverty initiative. Isn`t it glaringly obvious that their tax policy will increase poverty and destitution, that the poor will be poorer and the rich richer. Its as if, somehow, the 10p tax rate abolition is the work of someone else, an event outwith the government`s control, ie a big Chancellor did it and ran away!
But of course, this is of a piece with the entire deceitful thrust of New Labour governance over the last decade, lies and spin, financial rigour and belt-tightening for the poor and the working middle class, and sycophancy and lavish profits for the rich and their corporations. Lying, depraved dogs, the lot of them. The solution isn`t hard to understand - we want Brown and Darlink to reinstate the 10p tax rate, thats it, thats all, thats what we want. Yet, as with Iraq, its clear that we`re not the ones giving the orders.
I had to listen to around sixty hours of VD (as her friends call her) last year whilst working on a media research project. By the end, I was all set for a pleasant bout of psychosis myself.
Sixty hours? Sounds more like an enhanced interrogation technique than research.
Yeah, imagining the relevant bit from A Clockwork Orange only with a soundtrack of semi-hysterical rants about free prescriptions in Wales and shoplifting Roma kiddies probably gets it about right. Still, I now know exactly what proportion of callers are male and female, and where they tend to come from. Neither set of data is particularly surprising, by the way.
Rochenko’s latest blog post… The Successful Exploitation of New Ideas