That title do be a very old west country saying which I invented two minutes ago! I shall be happy if someone disagrees with me but I have a distinct suspicion that Cameron & Co are using a very blunt axe in their puny efforts to chop down the paraphenalia of the state, in fact, I think it might be one of those plastic ones you can buy for little children. I, personally, have better things to do than scan the list of utterly useless quangos allegedly chopped this week, instead I rely on the expert commentators to give me the gist. From their muted response it looks as though Francis 'Oily-Smooth' Maude, as he is known to his friends and don't ask what his enemies call him, has only produced the rabbit's ears from his hat whilst the fat,bloated carcass remains in being. As I told a friend who is on the staff of one of these quangos, the chances are he will be quietly shuffled off sideways into a department where he can just carry on not doing anything very useful for a lot of money and a good pension!
Michael Gove, whom The Coffee House wallahs assured us all would hit the ground running when he got his hands on the schools programme, found that his 'civil servants' had tied his shoelaces together so that he executed a perfect pratfall on day one. He doesn't seem to have done much better since, and this man has had nothing to do for the last 3 or 4 years, apart from cooking his housing allowances in his expenses claims, except work out exactly how he would introduce his reforms. "Could do better because he couldn't possibly do worse" might be a suitable school report for him!
Finally, we have a war which the admirals, generals and air marshals actually seem capable of winning, that is, the defence of the budget battle. 'Lance Corporal' Cameron has been told in no uncertain terms that he'll be on a charge if he starts sacking admirals and generals. They have obviously sussed him out as a Cadbury Flake with a soft centre and it appears that it only took a bit of incoming for him to copy Taliban tactics and fade away fast. Whether he has what it takes to come back again we shall find out, but I doubt it. At least you can say of that old Jock bruiser that he knew how to counter-punch the Brass.
In the end, the bond markets will decide on Dave's financial probity so we shall just have to wait and see. However, his other potential executioner is the much put upon middle-class. This contains the people who will win or lose you an election. They are about to have their benefits cut and their taxes increased enormously - VAT up 2.5% in January! Whilst their wallets are important to them, so are their views of daily life in this, 'our septic Isle'. They will not, I fear, be too impressed as police numbers are cut but the paperwork that keeps so many of them inside police stations is not. This, by a miracle of modern governence, will occur just as the loonies in charge of the asylum that is our revered Ministry of in-Justice, insist that criminals are released early and indeed, that more and more of them should not be put in prison at all; and today, The Mail reports that the handful who will be left incarcerated, poor dears, must be offered a choice of at least five different dinner courses!
If that nice-looking boy who runs the Labour party - wouldn't you just love your daughter to bring someone like him home? - can manage to keep his knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers locked up and out of sight, all he has to do is practice his Blair impersonations - perhaps Her Maj will do the decent thing and pop her clogs thus providing him with a chance to blub on TV - and he'll be home and dry in five years time.
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