Catching up

Christmas is over and it is time to start catching up with various stories. Fortunately for all concerned the EU, which will have to become an important part of this blog in the coming year, is not functioning. Well, its operators are not functioning, so there is nothing to report from there.

Moving right along to the possible next Prime Minister, my opinion of David Cameron, whom I first called the Boy-King of the Conservative Party, is too well known to reiterate. Therefore, I was delighted to see that ConHome posted the Boy-King's rather woolly New Year message in full. As did Iain Dale. We can all read the platitudinous, policy-free ideas of the man who would be Prime Minister.

Apparently, Conservative way of fighting an election is acknowledging when opponents are right. Nothing much amiss with that except for this comment that seems to have choked a number of people already:

Let's be honest that whether you're Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, you're motivated by pretty much the same progressive aims: a country that is safer, fairer, greener and where opportunity is more equal. It's how to achieve these aims that we disagree about - and indeed between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats there is a lot less disagreement than there used to be.

I am sure we would all like to see a country where motherhood and apple pie were accorded proper respect and our only disagreement would be on whether to flavour the apples with cinnamon or cloves. But if there are no differences between the three main parties (which, in a sense is true, given that they cannot control eighty per cent of the legislation) then why bother to vote for any of them or to vote at all. What will those much-hyped TV debates be about? No wonder they do not want the likes of UKIP to participate.

Incidentally, one would like to know whether the Boy-King's advisers know what the word "progressive" was code for in the decades of Soviet propaganda. Do they realize that when someone was described as "progressive" by, say, Pravda or Western publications that took their cue from it, that person was clearly understood to be a Communist sympathizer? Is that the image they want to create?

The Torygraph informs us that the Boy-King has stepped outside his usual box and met a few people who have different opinions from him and other politicos. He has, apparently, had a discussion with Helen Evans (full disclosure: she is a very good friend) who heads Nurses for Reform that campaigns for the privatization of the NHS.

Melissa Kite of the Torygraph is full of righteous anger or, at least, disquiet, as she points out that this meeting, described by Helen Evans on her blog, as possibly infuriating doctors and nurses. That would be the doctors who manage to fit in a very lucrative private practice over and above their NHS commitments. Just how infuriated are they going to be? More to the point is that, faced with the article, Cameron's office told everyone that the meeting meant nothing at all and the man himself is on record as being foursquare behind the NHS in its present huge and unwieldy Soviet-style existence but added that the Conservatives will undoubtedly make it better. Yeah, right.

Are we surprised to read on ConHome that an analysis of the latest local election results point to a hung Parliament? It is quite extraordinary: the Conservatives are facing an open goal with nary a defender in sight (something they point out endlessly) yet they seem incapable of scoring.