According to my latest "Dear Peregrine" letter from the Conservatives, whilst the Labour Party are tearing themselves apart, the Tories are "building a country that works for everyone".
Well, that's kinda comforting. I'd truly love to live in a country that works for everyone, but I can't speak any more that a few words of any Scandinavian languages. "Þegar þú talar fljótt ég get ekki skilið þig", or "Har du noen brukt cornflakes?", won't get you very far in Iceland or Norway so that's that knocked on the head!
So this is exciting news readers, is it not?
The poor Tories say that it's alright for the Labour Party as they are funded by the Trades Unions... although they left out the bit about the 600,000 Labour members who pay membership fees, as opposed to the 150,000 Tories ( a number which, according to Norman Tebbit, is likely to drop) who send their money to the Conservatives. But what about all those people that Cameron just elevated to the peerage, handed knighthoods or made companions of honour? What do they do with their millions?
According to the email they sent me, not on this occasion from a big name to impress me... yeah well, to try to impress me... but just signed, "the Conservatives", "people in kitchens and living rooms all over Britain are looking for a party that will build a country that works for them".
But I thought that we already had a party which was doing just that...that in fact the writer had already told me in the first paragraph that this party not only existed but that they were indeed the Tories.
So, pardon me, but I'm confused. Why are people looking in their living rooms and kitchens for them? They are in London in posh restaurants, clubs and possibly even knocking shops. And why is no one looking in bathrooms and bedrooms? Or does that have overtones that Tories don't like to mention? Well, not in front of plebs.
Well, I expect it's not my place to query all that, but given the drivel of these statements, I'm not surprised that no one wanted to sign the email.
Anyway, the good news is that you can pay £25 and get a mug that says "Theresa May a country that works for everyone" which leaves me even more confused, because I had no idea that Theresa May was a country... or that she was working for everyone.
But then, I have to say, ya know that if you'd pay £25 for something you can get in Morrisons for £1.25, you don't really need a mug.
Because you kinda ARE a mug.
The new Tory government in London are really clamping down on Benefits, doubtless as their way of reassuring their core vote that they haven’t gone soft just because they have a few daft Liberals about the place to make up the numbers.
Labour and SNP politicians have criticised plans to relocate people in a sort of Stalinist way, from areas of high unemployment to places where there are jobs. (Erm, where? London I suppose?)
The plans have been described by both parties put forward by Iain Duncan Smith as a return to 1980s’ “on your bike” policies of old Norman Tebbit whose constituency IDS now represents.
IDS said millions of people were trapped in places where there was no work and were unwilling to move for fear of losing their homes. He talked about “ghettos of poverty” where people were unable to find work but lacked the ability to leave. The scheme would allow people to go to the top of the housing list in another area, even it if was hundreds of miles away, rather than giving up their right to a home. Doubtless this will knock people already living in the area, down the list.
And for what...? In so many cases the jobs on offer will be at or just above minimum wage. The cost of moving is thousands... well above what poor people could ever hope to afford. And what about when the job comes to an end? After 3 months as the firm folds or the work dries up? Will they go to the top of the list to move back again, with no job to come to, but desperately wanting home to their family and friends?
Mr Duncan Smith needs to realise that mobility is a privi
lege of the rich. Moving house for them is almost always a matter of making a profit. Moving for working class people is an expense they can rarely afford. Given the state of the jobs market and the rapidity with which companies go under and jobs disappear, it’s a big risk. Mobility is much more difficult, like most other things, when you are poor.
Duncan Smith said Britain had one of the most static workforces in the western world, with people locked to areas and the result that there were more than 5,500,000 people who “simply don’t do a job”. Ah, that’s the reason they don’t do a job is it Mr Duncan Smith. I always wondered about that. So if they all just get off their fat, lazy backsides there will be jobs for them all ....right? What nonsense.
It’s not often I agree with Iain Gray but I’m right behind him when he said that the latest plans showed how little the Tories understood the reality of life for those seeking work or living on low incomes.
Grey pointed out: “Families cannot move around the country every time a parent is out of work. Politicians should be creating jobs in local communities, not trying to move unemployed people around like pieces on a board.”
Eilidh Whiteford for the SNP said: “Instead of endangering economic recovery with short-sighted cuts and reverting to policies which proved disastrous in the 1980s, the new coalition Government should be investing in growth and job creation across the UK.”
There was also criticism from Ed Balls and Ed Miliband.
We are all in this together, so we’re going to really hammer the poor and we can discuss it all at the next garden party, or perhaps at the Henley regatta. I’m sorry; I thought IDS had more about him than this nonsense.
There was a worrying development today when Norman Tebbit got involved in the election campaign for the Tories. He seemed to want to put a bit of old fashioned Tory backbone into David Cameron, and tell him he needed to do something about Nick Clegg and sharpish!
In an interview for The World at One, old Norman said that the Conservatives needed to ask some “searching questions” about Liberal policies. Well thanks Norman. David would never have worked that out on his own.
But the frightening thing is that he may have let the cat out of the bag. He suggested that Cameron was “shy” about talking up his own proposals “for fear that it would frighten the electors”.
For fear that it would frighten the electors! Wait a minute. What was in that manifesto? Does Norman mean that the manifesto and reality are two different things? That sounds pretty scary doesn’t it?
If there’
s more, maybe we should know about it before we vote? I bet they are trying at this very moment to put Norman back in his box before he gives the whole game away.
Tebbit has often put down Cameron’s “inclusive” form of Conservativism. His is an altogether harsher form based very closely on the teachings of his beloved leader and mad old woman Margaret Hilda. If what Cameron has up his sleeve is a return to THAT sort of Conservativism, then there will be no need to worry about immigration. It will be emigration that will cause the problem.
Norman Tebbit never held seriously high office but he was slave like at Thatcher’s side all the way through the ‘80s. He was once described in a parliamentary debate as a “semi-house-trained polecat”. His Spitting Image puppet was a leather-clad skinhead who was loyal to Thatcher, referring to her as "Leader". Scary old man. 
Anyway, on orders from Old Norman it seems, Cameron got stuck into Clegg and the Liberals warning that the public would be cheated if they voted Liberal Democrat out of dissatisfaction with Brown and his bedraggled crew of no hopers. Well, they’re my words, not exactly his. (Actually he might have done better if he'd gone with my words.)
Meanwhile Brown has been sucking up to the Liberals promising to back their calls for electoral reform, just like they did in 1997 and promptly ditched when they got in with a big majority. Never ever believe a politician Mr Clegg.... ah, but you’d know that, being one. 
On the other hand Mandleson predicted that support for the Liberals would fade once the public came to understand their policy agenda, including plans to cut child tax credits and child trust funds and an amnesty for illegal immigrants. He didn’t think that the public would “follow through” with their “flirtation” with Nick Clegg.
Of course Mandleson will be really in touch with the man on the street so we can believe him. But I'm suspecting that the questions covering foreign policy in this week's debate are going to favour Nick and his opposition to "the war".
Jeez Nick, it must be hard to be the centre of so much attention. I bet Gladstone was the last Liberal leader to make such a splash!
Pics: Norman Tebbit and Nick Clegg
