AND TODAY'S U-TURN IS... TPIMS

We believe that the best way to combat terrorism is to prosecute terrorists, not give away hard won British freedoms. That is why we will: scrap control orders, which can use secret evidence to place people under house arrest (Liberal Democrat Manifesto 2010, page 94.)

Yet another U-turn today that leaves the Lib Dems looking stupid. Hello TPIMs. That’s what the Tories are having instead of Control Orders, those nasty Labour things that the coalition (and the Lib Dems in particular) promised to abolish. But they ended up only abolishing the title. Well, at least they got rid of the curfew and replaced it with a ROS... a Required Overnight Stay, which is a kind of curfew with a warm cuddly, liberal, politically correct name.

And that is today’s U-Turn!

Sneaky Tories, though (today was clearly a good day to bury U-turns) they sneaked another U-turn out more or less on the same day. That’s the one where Caroline Spelman wanted to rake in some money for DEFRA by selling off all England’s forests and getting a cool £100 million for them. But she reckoned without the intervention of Boris Johnson’s sister, Rachel {and 85% of the population of England}. It seems that Clan Johnson are very active catalysts for U-turns, after he himself precipitated one over the changes to Housing Benefit. Anyway they are not now going to just flog off the trees to the highest bidder but are now going to have a consultation after which they will only sell the wood off the highest “nice” bidder.

So waiting for the favourite media catchphrase the U-turn is rather like waiting for a bus. You wait 13 years and then loads come along all at once, sometimes twice in one day.