YOU MIGHT WELL LOOK SAD, DAVE

Not only did the week not start too well for Cameron; it's gone on not being good for Cameron.


I'm not one to complain about u-turns. For sure there will be times when any government brings in a law that is at odds with the public's will, or is unworkable, or just plain silly.


And without a doubt, in cases like this, a u-turn is the right and proper thing to do, even if it means the less cerebral of opponents jumping up and down and waving their knickers in the air with joy.

Mrs Thatcher was stupid enough not to see the wisdom of climbing down from time to time when necessary. In the end the "lady's" refusal to turn was her undoing.

So it is good that Cameron's government u-turns on bad policies.  The shame is that there are so many bad policies for them to u-turn on. Buzzards' nest, pasties, caravans, secret trials, charitable donations tax... all in one week! It must be a record. The Telegraph has a full list of the u-turns (although they can only find 33, and I suspect that there are more).

To a certain extent it has taken the heat off Hunt, but I should think  it won't do him any good in the end. He really has to go. He's not just a failed minister, he's a complete laughing stock. The question is, will he take Cameron with him. The answer: probably not. Cameron has more front than Cannes and will brazen out the fact that despite knowing how biased Hunt was (he knew because Hunt had emailed him to tell him); despite knowing that Hunt used to work for Murdoch and that his wife still does; despite Hunt being friends with the Murdoch set, he appointed him to replace Vince Cable (who was removed for being biased) and to a quasi judicial role adjudicating on a massive bid by the Murdochs.

Added to all that he made a gut churningly sycophantic speech about the Queen saying that he depended on her counsel, because it was full of British common sense. If he has been acting on the advice of the Queen, and her good old British common sense (no other nation has it quite like the Brits), then all I can say is that her good old British common sense is about as dependable as the good old British Railways, or the good old Royal Mail. Because he's managed to get damn all right so far.

And there's still Friday to come!

ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND THEY GO; WHERE THEY'LL STOP, NOBODY KNOWS

If Mrs Thatcher is actually aware of what is going on, she must be wondering what has happened to her beloved Conservative party.

For not only is the gentleman for turning, he does it so often I wonder if he knows whether he is coming or going. I can only imagine that in the expensive carpet that no doubt covers the floor of his office, there must be a worn patch like two “U”s, stuck together end to end!

He came to power on a promise that Cabinet Ministers would be allowed to develop their own policies without the constant hand of number ten guiding their every move, something he had criticised roundly when Labour was in power. There would be no spin doctors, no Alistair Campbell figures dictating what was right and what was wrong.

Well that didn’t last long. The foot in the mouth epidemic that afflicted Labour carried well into the Tory cabinet, and soon advisers were dispatched to each department to ensure that a sensible line was taken.

Today there has been a U-turn on “intelligent sentencing” (most of which I agree with, copied as it is from Scotland). I just wonder if it is to be replaced by “daft sentencing”. I feel sorry for Ken. He should have known that letting rapists halve their sentences would go down like a lead balloon, and he should have handled it better, but the rest of his policies seem to me to be sound.

But we have had Caroline Spelman and her English forest sell off, not sell off, sell off a bit; then there was Gove and his wrong-minded withdrawal from English School Sport Partnership programmes, which tied in with the English hosting the Olympics, and the legacy thereof, only to have suddenly found £112 million which he had carelessly left at the back of a drawer, and withdrawing his withdrawal.

There was the English Health Minister’s programme for cutting school milk (who did that before? Oh yeah Thatcher the Milk Snatcher), which was reversed within minutes by no less a personage than Cameron himself!

There was the cut in forces which went too far, and about which Fox leaked his letter direct to the PM, to the press, but which, after a call to No 10 from Mrs Clinton, bit the dust.

The brave Scottish Labour-type Tory policy of a prison sentence for anyone caught carrying a knife, which was in the manifesto (which of course would have included fishermen going about their business) was also ditched, along it seems with the repeal of teh Hunting with Hounds legislation in England.

And of course the piece de résistance is the humiliating climbdown over handing the English Health Service over to GPs, most of whom didn’t want it. If only they had listenend before they acted.

In light of this, I have hope that the Finance department may soon decide that raising VAT was a wrong move, penalising the poor disproportionately, and that taking money away from the poorest pensioners (after announcing how generously their government was going to restore the link between earnings and pensions) was plain wicked. They need to look too at their policy of paying a French company by result for getting sick people off Incapacity Benefit to save money, and apparently being indifferent to the fact that some of them are dying in utter poverty while waiting for appeals to be heard.

ENCORE QUELQUES PENSÉES ALÉATOIRES..OR, AS WE SAY IN SCOTLAND

I was shaking with anger this morning as I heard the chairman of Southern Cross, Christopher Fisher, try to excuse the catastrophic mess that they are in. Directors sold off the properties to make themselves shed loads of money; properties on which they now cannot afford to pay the rents, resulting in old and vulnerable people being left in a state of despair over their futures. It appears that directors made millions by selling their shares just before these same shares took a nosedive. The care of elderly people is far too important to be left in the hands of money grubbing spivs like this lot. The governments should take the homes into public ownership. The worth of the company is nil, so there should be no compensation to the shareholders. That we treat our elderly so badly is an horrific reflection upon our society.

The Telegraph reveals that the Duchess of York is on the verge of bankruptcy, again. What on earth does that woman do with money? This time, instead of selling her husband, she has sold herself for the ridiculously low sum of £200,000 to Oprah Winfrey’s tv channel for a documentary about, yes, you guessed it, how dreadful she feels; how embarrassed she is that she let everyone down; the shame she has brought on the royal family, etc. She lives rent free in a house that we provide for her husband because he is the son of the head of state. Otherwise, she says, she would be homeless. Has she heard of council housing? On the other hand it could be said that she was married to an extremely rich man form an extremely rich family. Maybe they could bale her out with the own private money?

Another day, another announcement from David Cameron that he is stepping up Britain’s foreign aid contribution. This time it is the very worthy cause of immunisation of children against diarrhoea and pneumonia. This makes the UK the largest donor in the world (even bigger than the USA) to this cause. However, needless to say Cameron announced this at a London conference on the subject, which gave him the opportunity to do a bit of grandstanding. I’d be the first to say that these vaccinations are important. I watch reports from Africa with kids dying of preventable disease with tears streaming down my face, so I am more than sympathetic to the cause. But when will this man start thinking about spending some money in the UK. There are sick kids here too.

Shock, horror. Kate Middleton wore a dress she had worn three years ago, and a coat she had worn four years ago. Perhaps she is just like all of us? Nope. Today I wore a coat I had worn yesterday and jeans that I had worn last week and (I don’t know if any of you do this sort of thing), that I had washed and ironed myself!!!.

Looks like this will be a ‘super u-turn week’ in Westminster, with not one but four of the pesky little blighters. Benefit caps; reduction in foreign students; weekly bin emptying in England (Eric Pickles, pictured), and yes, the English NHS nutjob plans of Andrew Nutjob Lansley. If Mrs Thatcher is still able to take any of this in she must be spinning in...er well, whatever she is in. Aye David, being prime minister isn’t all about garden parties, shaking hands with the senior partner, and making gifts that we have to borrow the money to give, and appearing with Michael Caine. A lot of people know that, but clearly you didn’t.

U-TURN IF YOU WANT TO: OH THANK YOU I SHALL

Sooooooooo...as I understand it, when Dave was in opposition he thought that the SNP’s idea of a sliding petrol tax in line with the ever changing price of oil was a good idea. It offered the motorist some stability. So when the price of oil, and therefore petrol, went up, the tax would be adjusted downwards so that the Treasury, whilst still making more money than they had anticipated, would not “make a killing”. And the poor motorist would manage to fill his car.

Then when he got in to Downing Street he did a U-turn on that policy. Well no surprise there, there are a bunch of U-turns to chose from.

Then he was put on the spot by Andrew Marr on his Sunday morning programme and he kinda did a U-turn again: “ It is something I have asked the Treasury to look at because when you are filling up the car and it's £1.30 a litre, it's incredibly painful for families up and down the country and I understand that." quoth he.

Love it. Can I tell you Dave, that it’s painful for single people, couples, families and anyone else at £1.30 a litre. Families have no exclusive right to the pain. It will soon be cheaper to use Vodka to fill up your car “up and down the bloody country" (where did they get that phrase), and possibly across it as well!!!

He went on to blame Labour. It was their tax and the government wasn't able to stop it. What? Even after two budgets Dave?

Anyway, fear not, he made another U-turn yesterday and said that he didn’t want to get people’s hopes up....

Ha ha ha ha ha ha . Get people’s hopes up.... I think not Dave, we have abandoned hope, all who have entered here. Well, except of course for the royal family, who seem to be doing very nicely out of this government. (Sir david Cameron, maybe?)

U-turns seem to be his stock in trade, but this is a hum dinger, as my granny would say. A U-turn, on his U-turn on the U-turn on the pledge... Only a highly trained U-turner could do that without getting very dizzy and falling off their polo pony, and poor old Mrs Thatcher must have fallen off her broomstick.

So don’t worry Dave. It was a pledge before the election, we expected you to break it. Our hopes never left the ground.

So what was today’s U-turn?

U-TURN IF YOU WANT TO: THE COALITION'S NOT FOR TURNING

Now, let me start off by saying that this matter does not affect Scotland, and so some may wonder why I bother to blog about it.

My answer is that it is less the actual item, but more the principle that bothers me, and that the perpetrators, in certain matters, govern my country as well as England.

The matter in hand is the English NHS’s centralized database which Labour had set up and was ready to roll as of April passed. Both Conservative and Liberal Democrat election manifestos promised to scale back on what they called Labour's database state, and both parties' health spokesmen pledged before the poll that the centralizing of NHS medical records would be halted.

Halted?

It was therefore a rather strange situation when, in a parliamentary written answer (the type used to slip out bad news) the Heath minister Simon Burns said: "Uploading of information to the Summary Care Record will continue to take place, where the relevant general practitioner practices and primary care trusts (PCTs) agree that patients have been adequately informed about the process, and properly enabled to opt out should they wish, and where GP practices and PCTs are satisfied that data are of an appropriate quality for sharing."

Well, that seems like a very strange “HALTED” to me.

OK. We can argue till the cows come home about whether or not this centralized system is a good idea or not. If you have just been in an accident, are unconscious, in another town in your country, and allergic to say morphine, you may be very glad that your record is accessible; if on the other hand, someone sticks the whole thing onto a memory stick and sells it to the highest bidder, then you may not.

It isn’t that that I want to discuss. It is the fact that with around a month gone since the election the coalition has changed its tune on some of the Labour’s Surveillance Society that was due to be dismantled.

What excuse can there be? It’s not a coalition compromise. Neither party was in favour of it. Last year, Stephen O'Brien, health spokesman for the Tories, said a Conservative government would dismantle the NHS IT system. And earlier this year Norman Lamb, health spokesman for the Liberals said that the NHS IT scheme had been a disastrous waste of money and should be abandoned.

So why not abandon it?

It can’t be that there was something top secret that, as opposition parties, they were not allowed to know about, as there may sometimes be in say Defence or Treasury, or to do with the Secret Services. Nope, this is just a policy about health data bases, nothing secret or dangerous.... except of course to the people who are on them.

So, why the change?

Any ideas?

We’ve already had the policy that the size of parliament is to be reduced, but first they have to create 200 or so new Lords.

So what is next for U-turns?