Confidence? In the Home Office?

Now I admit that terrorism is of the utmost seriousness and that the threat level has never been higher (well it has, but, you know, figure of speech) but at the end of the day, one has to get up in the morning, go to work etc... one has to generally get on with life.

Indeed, it seems the government has a similar sentiment.  Jacqui Smith today said that 'the aim of the Government's new counter terrorism strategy is to reduce the risk of terrorism to allow people to go about their lives freely and with confidence'.

Sounds good - 'confidence' after all is important.  We don't want the public scared senseless do we?

err...

Well Ms Smith then gave us a comprehensive list (ooh err, watch out, it's those lists again) of what such 'risk' involves.  Cue mental images of mushroom clouds, a London uninhabitable for 50 years, gruesome boils, people with three heads for centuries to come, that sort of thing.  This was reinforced by phrases such as 'highly likely' and 'strike at any time'.  All rather alarming....

Sorry, got sidetracked.  What was she saying about 'confidence'?

I hate to alarm you further, but let us not forget that the Home Office is in charge of all this counter-terrorism lark...

On second thoughts, forget confidence...

Dale's Database Defect

I was browsing the excellent TP Political Blog Directory when something caught my eye...

There is just something about it that doesn't quite add up...

A small tickle on the 6 o'clock news

Admittedly, at first nothing seems out of place...

A large lectern or perhaps an unfortunate camera angle?

Err...

It would seem not...

Schoolboy spat? This was more a knifing in the playground.

It started out nice enough with an apology of sorts.  I, of course, use the term ‘apology’ in the loosest of senses.  I feared we may have a repeat of last week.  Unemployment, said Gordy, was “a matter of personal regret”.  He regards it as “one person, a second person…”.  I felt alarm rising.  Unemployment has hit two million.  We may be here for some time.  The pain of the usual list – our PM really does like to categorise everything into lists - caused only mild discomfort.  It was the life story that had me diving for cover.  We’ve all heard it, the Americans have now heard about it, no doubt the G20 will hear about it too.  ‘I came into politics because…’  Ahh!  Quick, duck!

Things had kicked off.  Dave wanted Gordy to admit that his ‘best-placed’ claim was wrong.  Dave wanted a real apology, one containing the word ‘sorry’ or ‘wrong’, preferably in the same sentence as ‘I’.  “Admit it”, demanded Dave.  “No”, retorted Gordy, “the fact is…”.  Dave looked on unimpressed.  He wasn’t being pulled into any fights over lunch money for Gordy kept hurling projectiles of ‘1.3 billion’ and ’44 billion’ around and you can get a lot of turkey twizzlers for that.  1.3 billion what?  Bananas?  Careful, mustn’t get the Foreign Secretary overexcited.  Gordy, like all good teacher’s pets (haven’t we heard all about his school too?), decided that it would be best to ‘correct’ Dave.  The claw came out and began pounding the dispatch box.  Invest, invest invest, pound pound pound.  Snore snore snore if you ask me.  Maybe he was searching for the Trident launch button?  HMS Vanguard is in the Thames pointing at CCHQ as we speak.

“More!” they cried.  “There’s plenty more!” roared Dave as he began to rise above the playground rabble.  This wasn’t Dave as we’ve seen him before, this was angry Dave.  “Let me correct him” he shouted, pointing his best prefect finger at Gordy.  The slicey hand had an outing, an attempt to slice through the layers of trivia.  It will take more than that.  I recommend that nuclear warhead.  Dave was shaking with anger and frustration.  The hand sliced, the finger pointed, and the soft soft Tory hair waggled.

Gordy was clearly rattled by the hair waggling.  Even he knows it must be bad when the unshakable Tory sweep waggles.  Only the winds of change can waggle that and up until now Gordy has kept those draughts out.  “He’s wrong about”… stammered Gordy, and then we got a list.  Take cover!  Statistics about.  The ‘1.3 billion’ projectile was once again hurled around, as was ‘110 million’, ‘300,000’, ‘1 million’, ‘next month’, ‘six months’ and even the ‘Secretary of State for Work and Pensions’.  Purnell looked unsure at this.  Then again he always looks unsure.  Maybe he was unnerved at going out to play after double maths and finding the Prime Minister throwing penny chews in the playground.

Dave however, was having none of this playground nonsense.  This wasn’t a lunchtime brawl.  This was war.  “We have just had the view from the bunker”.  Maybe Brown really is after that trident button?  Dave was growing angrier by the minute, unleashing not only angry-Dave, but sarcastic-Dave.  “Fred Goodwin, or, sorry, I should say Sir Fred Goodwin.”  Ouch!  The slap stung, the PM reeled, retreating behind the machine gun fire of facts and figures.  That ‘1.3 billion’ projectile once again sailed across the floor.  Super-Dave batted it back, straight into the lap of Dennis Skinner.  “I know that he wanted miners to join the government: well, now he was got one - Lord Myners.”  The projectile exploded; the playground cheered and jeered.  The Speaker suggested that Miss Snelgrove may need ‘a wee tablet from the doctor’.  Is the school nurse in on a Wednesday?  At this rate, we’ll need the St. John’s Ambulance.

“Are not this Government just running around, like headless chickens?” asked Dave.  Do please take a minute to relish this mental image.  “Is not that combination of ineffectiveness and hyperactivity the worst combination of all?”  Hyperactivity?  Can’t be too careful with that these days.  Perhaps it's the Cabinet who need wee tablets from the doctor?

Brown accused Dave of being “out on a limb”.  The only limb I see out is that to which Dave’s slicey hand is attached.  The Tory leader’s pained expression said it all as Brown searched his pockets, finding only his old ‘shadow shadow Chancellor’ remark.  The gang were gathering round now.  Brown was out of penny chews.  “Unprecedented means without precedent.  Global means that it affects the whole of the world.”  Dave did not take kindly to being patronised and, face stinging, the knife came out.  “What a complete phoney!”  The anger was real, the frustration audible, the emotion strong.  The knife was given a final twist: “the Prime Minister has led us to this point without a hint of an apology, and the British people will never forget it.”

Wounded, Brown soldiered on, but the front bench seemed to be in a state of shock, indeed, they seemed positively shell-shocked.  Darling and Murphy looked as though they had been recently installed in Madame Tussaud’s.  The only thing that got a response was a question about college funding.  Purnell managed a brief smile, presumably because his memory of college is about as old as that of him putting on his socks this morning.  There were no smiles elsewhere.  The Tory front bench was sombre.  Their leader was not unscathed.  This was bloody.  This means war.

Watch Out! It's the Image Police...

What is going on?  Westminster seems to be in the grips of some investigation by the image police… again.  First is the news that David Miliband spent £6,700 on ‘the presentation of foreign policy issues', Whitehall speak for some sort of image makeover, (I use the term ‘makeover’ in the loosest of senses).  Fine, but to be honest, £6,700 seems a little steep.  I could have done it for a lot less than that.  ‘Don’t present foreign policy issues with fruit’.  There.  See?  Just stick the cheque in the post.  The £85 of ‘IT training’ – blogging to be more accurate -  seems slightly odder.  I mean, typing?  The man is intelligent, surely he can type?  I smell the image police again.  The blog-o-sphere is just another outlet through which ministers can go ‘off message’; ‘the message’ and the current ‘buzz words’ must be reinforced.  That’s before you even start on things like ‘tone’ – ‘engaging with the voter in an accessible yet informative manner’.  I’m surprised it was only £85.  For once it seems that taxpayer has a bargain.

The police investigation seems to be spreading, from King Charles Street to Downing Street.  Again I ask, what is going on?  Every photo on the No. 10 website of Brown’s speeches seems to depict what can only be described as a ‘Messiah Moment’, arms stretched, upwardly turned palms.  One cannot help but wonder if they know something we don’t.  The image police have been at work.  That, however, is nothing.  If the media ‘dessert’ that was the Washington trip was garnished with Brown’s ‘credit crunch tantrum at 30,000 feet’, then the ‘cherry’ had to be the detail that the Prime Minister was ‘jacketless’.  Don’t get me wrong, I fully appreciate its significance, after all, this is the man who sunbathes in a suit.  Realistically, however, I don’t overly care whether or not he is jacketless, I’m more interested in what he is planning to do about the economy.  

Yet, what is most worrying for the sanity of our government (and us, as the taxpayer, for these ‘makeovers’ are not cheap) is that the remit of the image police seems to be growing.  Brown’s Congress speech – the whipped cream on top of the stodgy sponge of the previous day’s press conference – bore the unmistakable signs of image police involvement as soon as the first word was uttered.  Slow delivery, precise enunciation, deep open throat.  Classic.  What was not classic, however, was the new phenomenon of physical punctuation.  This seemed to constitute superfluous full stops in the form of vigorous nodding.  A partnership.  Nod.  Of.  Nod.  Purpose.  Nod.  No.  Nod.  Power.  Nod.  On earth.  Nod.  That can ever drive us.  Nod.  Apart.  Nod.  I was waiting for something to drop off.  Indeed, such was the vigour of the punctuation that the usually unshakable hair was displaced from its sweep.  At this point alarms must have gone off in image police HQ for in today’s Northern Ireland statement, the physical punctuation seemed to have been downgraded to vigorous blinking.  One wonders what will be next?  One wonders who will be next?  Harman and that ‘giraffe’ suit?  Mandelson’s ‘Blair’ hand gestures?  Above all, when one looks at the immense problems we, as a country are facing, and then one looks at the government, one wonders what, precisely, is going on?

How Things Change and How Things Don't...

Isn't it amazing how quickly perceptions of our politicians change.  Amidst media reports of Cabinet dissent, leadership manoeuvers and yet more more finger pointing, I came across this picture from the beginning of January.  Well, I say change, but I'm not convinced that the portrayal of Lord Mandelson or Miliband would look so out of place.  Maybe the former would require a small update with the help of a green pen...