Two nights ago a Eurozone delegation headed for China to beg for money. Meanwhile a bit further south a young pair of Twigalets passed a couple of middle-of-the-night hours at Dubai airport in transit from London to Johannesburg. What have these two things got to do with each other?
Throwing away any vestige of a negotiating position or inscrutability,the Eurozone team's message beamed from Brussells was simple,- "We're out of money to underpin our currency against possible defaults by some of our more profligate members and the better behaved countries amongst us simply haven't got enough to cover for them all. Please rescue us by helping to prop up the lot." An interesting proposition. One can forgive the Chinese a flicker of a smile before asking the question: "And what's the payback for us?", never mind an underlying "You got yourselves into this,- getting out will cost you". Even within Europe the more thrifty, hard working and disciplined Germans are getting very unhappy at bailing out one fellow Eurozone potential defaulter after another. "Wouldn't we all like the Mediterranean lifestyle ",they ask.
China is a country of harsh realities. Crowded living conditions, long and hard work on the land or in sweatshop factories, and tough discipline are amongst its hallmarks. People survive and advance by sheer hard work and dogedness. Nothing like a welfare state bolstered with benefits, pensions and the like exists. It has strong similarities with industrial revolution Britain and Europe.
It may therefore be difficult to persude China to risk huge amounts of money to prop up a welfare addicted Europe with its poor wortk ethic,legal limitations on working hours,notions that people have a right to money even if they don't want to work and all the rest. Why should China support a life of milk and honey in the Eurozone when they can't afford anything like it at home,- and culturally probably wouldn't even want it? In Chinese eyes the Europeans just don't get it.
So what's that got to do with our two travellers observing life at Dubai airport in the middle of the night, a time of day when Europe's major airports and much of the rest of its economic activity are largely closed so that its earthbound citizens can have a good night's sleep? The Dubai concourse is teaming with people connecting in any combination of directions you can imagine. Not all of them want to be there but are driven by the needs of themselves, their families and their children to seek work or business wherever in the world it is to be found. Traders, workers (there are 1 million Chinese in Africa alone), tourists, family visitors of every social status, race and creed or none flow hither and thither. Within an hour or three they are on their way, leaving the life of yesterday or today for what and wherever their life and business will be tomorrow. A 24/7/365 truly global world is on display ,on the move, and immensely busy. It's about survival and advancement for this generation and the next, not for comfort. A little to the west, Europe has had a good dinner, is sound asleep and strangely irrelevant to most of what these nocturnal travellers are seeing and doing.
There you have it in a nutshell. That's why the gents in China did not hurry to the airport to meet the Eurozone delegation who will arrive to stand naked before them as supplicants. Not a good starting position from which to get a good deal,- or even Chinese tea and sympathy.
Saturday 29 October 2011
Tuesday 25 October 2011
The F- word. Two overhearings.
Twigaview, being for family reading,- is not generally given to use of the "f" word or similar but two recent overhearings did deliver an unavoidable wry smile.
First: In the cafe of a large London hospital. 2 ladies of a certain age are awaiting news of the arrival of another grandchild somewhere else in the building.
The comment " I hope it's not another f-----g grand daughter."
Thoughful pause, then ...."I hate girls."
Second: The scene is lunchtime on a large cruise ship in the port of Naples. Two already well fed uniformed members of the local authorities, just on the board at lunchtime in the course of their duties no doubt, have just sat down with well laden plates from the buffet. A Philippino waiter approaches and an exchange takes place accompanied by much shrugging of shoulders and something in Italian. The waiter scuttles over to his Italian supervisor and asks him to interpret. They have asked for two beers. He has asked for a cabin number,-which of course they haven't got but he has insisted on having,- and then gone into unintelligible Italian. The supervisor detatches himself and goes over and talks to the gents concerned. One way or another the matter is resolved. It would have been helpful if he had then taken the time to go back to the original waiter and explained that what he had heard in reply to the request for a cabin number was clearly the Italian for "Why don't you go f- yourself?"
First: In the cafe of a large London hospital. 2 ladies of a certain age are awaiting news of the arrival of another grandchild somewhere else in the building.
The comment " I hope it's not another f-----g grand daughter."
Thoughful pause, then ...."I hate girls."
Second: The scene is lunchtime on a large cruise ship in the port of Naples. Two already well fed uniformed members of the local authorities, just on the board at lunchtime in the course of their duties no doubt, have just sat down with well laden plates from the buffet. A Philippino waiter approaches and an exchange takes place accompanied by much shrugging of shoulders and something in Italian. The waiter scuttles over to his Italian supervisor and asks him to interpret. They have asked for two beers. He has asked for a cabin number,-which of course they haven't got but he has insisted on having,- and then gone into unintelligible Italian. The supervisor detatches himself and goes over and talks to the gents concerned. One way or another the matter is resolved. It would have been helpful if he had then taken the time to go back to the original waiter and explained that what he had heard in reply to the request for a cabin number was clearly the Italian for "Why don't you go f- yourself?"
Monday 17 October 2011
UK's new Transport Secretary and the battle of the Tory Nimby Clans.
The appointment of Justine Greening as the new Conservative/coalition Transport Secretary will be closely examined by two vocal rival southern based party factions. One the one hand are the mainly urban West Londoners whose domain stretches from Westminster out to beyond Heathrow and on the other the more rural Chiltern and Rural Bucks county and country folk. Townies v Counties with the Prime Minister having a foot in both camps.
The previous incumbent was Philip Hammond, firmly in the former group. His predecessor Lord Adonis, latterly probably the best and most interested transport minister for many years, had left on his desk two major strategically important transport schemes, one the privately funded new 3rd runway at Heathrow, almost ready to go, and the other the mainly publicly funded much needed 21st century High Speed 2 rail line from London initially to Birmingham and later to points north. In the face of very noisy party constituency lobbies against both he cancelled Heathrow's runway but continued to run with HS2. In fairness he was constrained by a downright foolish pre election pledge by his boss David Cameron to scrap the runway but he also threw in for good measure an also nearly ready to go inexpensive project to link the airport into the southern railways system. This would have given it much needed direct links to Waterloo and to Reading, Britain's foremost railway hub a few miles out to the west. It would though would have caused additional road congestion in his own Sunningdale constituency. The power of local interests over national ones looked glaring conspicuous. The Chiltern and Rural Bucks near hysterical campaign, partly funded by public money from,- yes, it's true,- the Tory led Buckinghamshire County Council,- has continued unabated .Where MPs have faced any conflict of interests of local or national they have plumped firmly for the former.
What then are the portents for the Justine Greening era in the transport hot seat? Unless this pattern of Ministerial behaviour can be broken and national needs promoted over local ones, the answer has to be probably not good for aviation and London airport capacity but encouraging for HS 2 supporters. Abandoning both projects would leave the Tories open to the charge that they are totally without answers to Britain's growing transport needs and current ever worstening congestion. Worse than that they would be seen to reject anything that could achieve economic growth if it gets in the way of their constituency members' local comfort. This would reinforce some old images of the party which it has long been trying to shake off. It would also say firmly to "the north" that "we really aren't interested in you". Not a good idea on any score.
The previous incumbent was Philip Hammond, firmly in the former group. His predecessor Lord Adonis, latterly probably the best and most interested transport minister for many years, had left on his desk two major strategically important transport schemes, one the privately funded new 3rd runway at Heathrow, almost ready to go, and the other the mainly publicly funded much needed 21st century High Speed 2 rail line from London initially to Birmingham and later to points north. In the face of very noisy party constituency lobbies against both he cancelled Heathrow's runway but continued to run with HS2. In fairness he was constrained by a downright foolish pre election pledge by his boss David Cameron to scrap the runway but he also threw in for good measure an also nearly ready to go inexpensive project to link the airport into the southern railways system. This would have given it much needed direct links to Waterloo and to Reading, Britain's foremost railway hub a few miles out to the west. It would though would have caused additional road congestion in his own Sunningdale constituency. The power of local interests over national ones looked glaring conspicuous. The Chiltern and Rural Bucks near hysterical campaign, partly funded by public money from,- yes, it's true,- the Tory led Buckinghamshire County Council,- has continued unabated .Where MPs have faced any conflict of interests of local or national they have plumped firmly for the former.
What then are the portents for the Justine Greening era in the transport hot seat? Unless this pattern of Ministerial behaviour can be broken and national needs promoted over local ones, the answer has to be probably not good for aviation and London airport capacity but encouraging for HS 2 supporters. Abandoning both projects would leave the Tories open to the charge that they are totally without answers to Britain's growing transport needs and current ever worstening congestion. Worse than that they would be seen to reject anything that could achieve economic growth if it gets in the way of their constituency members' local comfort. This would reinforce some old images of the party which it has long been trying to shake off. It would also say firmly to "the north" that "we really aren't interested in you". Not a good idea on any score.
Tuesday 11 October 2011
London's Airports: Heathwick-the daftest idea yet.
Twigaview is very much up for new ideas and things which move the world, people and business forward. New ideas are exciting. Many lead to better futures. Without them we become brain dead. That does not however exempt them from close examination for aspects which could be better and others which are sometimes just daft and lead us to the cliff edge rather than away from it. The newly floated "Heathwick " concept to solve London's increasingly acute problem of lack of Heathrow runways for further development and business expansion may read wonderfully in the world of fantasies but on the real planet it takes very few seconds to respond that to save us all time ,money and wasted print space it should head straight for the bin.
This latest face saving UK Government idea to try to mitigate some of the effects of its David Cameron ordained pre election promise to cancel the third Heathrow runway project by building a £5bn high speed train link between the now constrained airport and the also constrained single runway Gatwick is truly in the 1st April catageory.
Quite simply who would transit through a hub whose runways are 30+ miles apart and connected by a train trip when at Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Helsinki,the Gulf airports and others they can simply walk from gate to gate or at worst take a brief trip on a people mover/mini train?
That's before one even begins to contemplate the real logistics and costs. Unlike Hong Kong, the UK hasn't grasped the idea that the train has to be brought to the customers not the customers,-via a lengthy hike,-to the train. A Heathrow-Gatwick rail link would probably have to be either customs and immigration bonded, not to mention escape-proof. It would therefore be inaccessible to purely domestic passengers. Alternatively it could be landside and available to all. Its airline transfer users would then have to have to have visas (price £45 a head),and, via queues, go through arrivals controls at one airport and departure controls at the other. Either option would make the volumes of passengers so low that huge subsidies would be required for the train which would have to be free to users to even be considered. For many of the same reasons plus conflicting runway alignment, Northolt doesn't cut it either.
The other options of a Hong Kong, Osaka or Seoul type new airport built on "Boris" or any other Thames Estuary new or existing island also don't look likely flyers. This is UK, not Asia. The single minded dynamic focus on projects of national importance simply isn't British. Whatever is proposed will be fought by armies of environmentalists, planet savers, lovers of rare species of butterflies only to be found in Boris' left ear and countless others. The planning battle alone would take years.
At the time of the General Election in 2000, Heathrow's third runway was nearly ready to proceed. With Transport Minister, Philip Hammond now saying clearly "never", it now looks lost and will very soon become impractical or vastly more expensive unless the Conservatives are prepared to say those unimaginable words "Sorry, we got it wrong. We have to do it after all".
Trains might fly.
The whole saga is a man made national disaster for London and UK's role in air transport and for its long term position in worldwide business and tourism. It is extremely bad news for the struggling UK economy and employment. There will be many beneficiaries, but they won't be Britain or the British.
This latest face saving UK Government idea to try to mitigate some of the effects of its David Cameron ordained pre election promise to cancel the third Heathrow runway project by building a £5bn high speed train link between the now constrained airport and the also constrained single runway Gatwick is truly in the 1st April catageory.
Quite simply who would transit through a hub whose runways are 30+ miles apart and connected by a train trip when at Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Helsinki,the Gulf airports and others they can simply walk from gate to gate or at worst take a brief trip on a people mover/mini train?
That's before one even begins to contemplate the real logistics and costs. Unlike Hong Kong, the UK hasn't grasped the idea that the train has to be brought to the customers not the customers,-via a lengthy hike,-to the train. A Heathrow-Gatwick rail link would probably have to be either customs and immigration bonded, not to mention escape-proof. It would therefore be inaccessible to purely domestic passengers. Alternatively it could be landside and available to all. Its airline transfer users would then have to have to have visas (price £45 a head),and, via queues, go through arrivals controls at one airport and departure controls at the other. Either option would make the volumes of passengers so low that huge subsidies would be required for the train which would have to be free to users to even be considered. For many of the same reasons plus conflicting runway alignment, Northolt doesn't cut it either.
The other options of a Hong Kong, Osaka or Seoul type new airport built on "Boris" or any other Thames Estuary new or existing island also don't look likely flyers. This is UK, not Asia. The single minded dynamic focus on projects of national importance simply isn't British. Whatever is proposed will be fought by armies of environmentalists, planet savers, lovers of rare species of butterflies only to be found in Boris' left ear and countless others. The planning battle alone would take years.
At the time of the General Election in 2000, Heathrow's third runway was nearly ready to proceed. With Transport Minister, Philip Hammond now saying clearly "never", it now looks lost and will very soon become impractical or vastly more expensive unless the Conservatives are prepared to say those unimaginable words "Sorry, we got it wrong. We have to do it after all".
Trains might fly.
The whole saga is a man made national disaster for London and UK's role in air transport and for its long term position in worldwide business and tourism. It is extremely bad news for the struggling UK economy and employment. There will be many beneficiaries, but they won't be Britain or the British.
Saturday 8 October 2011
The Party Conference Season-It's all over and not a leader in sight.
Those were the three weeks they were,-except that they really weren't. At the time it may feel like a feast, with one course quickly following another, but in the same Chinese style it isn't long before you wonder if the conferences really happened. Apart from boosting the the bars, hotels and conference centres of three cities not normally blessed with a surfeit of tourism one searches for any lasting significance at all.
Birmingham and the Lib Dems have been overwhelmingly forgotten. There are big public concerns about unconstrained immigration, the role of the EU in determining British issues, and the abuse of human rights legislation to circumvent what is seen as the spirit of the law. All law is about the balance human rights and obligations and to have a separate code placed on top of that concept looks like removing this essential basis. The Lib Dems, by turning their backs on all criticisms of these things, simply reinforced their own irrelevance as anything but a protest and pressure group, a role to which they are likely to return in the 2015 General Election. Leadership of the nation? No sign of it in Liverpool.
Next up was Old Labour or Labour Classic depending on how it would like to be branded. Their chosen venue was Birmingham, a city which is now really the outer fringe of the south rather than an icon of the north. It's not too far either from the Labour intellectual heartlands of north London and Islington where Milipedia and Peter Simple's Hampstead Thinkers of old took root. The most significant moment, and the only one of fundamental and fundamentalist importance was that Milipedian pause when Ed gave the union carthorses and friends the opportunity to boo Blair and signal that the more inclusive, centrist version of the party which won three successive General Elections is dead and buried. That hopeful and sunny evening of the bussed-in crowds in Downing Street when Blair first came to power in 1997 is ancient history. The booing was the equivalent of scrawling graffiti over the party's most successful recent electoral run of power. An extraordinary but stunningly revealing moment. The party has gone back to its envy filled class resentment homelands. It feels comfortable there. Does enough of the electorate though really feel comfortable with a group which actively and often passionately hates large sections of the community? Again, 2015 looms.
The Tories in Manchester, a place well beyond the ken and interest of many of them, were probably bound to disappoint,-and did. The Theresa/Ken catflap gave the BBC in particular a mouthwatering opportunity to make both look silly and who can blame them for taking it? Wouldn't you? Theresa May was guilty of over egging a minor though true element of a legal case and Ken Clarke seemed to be the only person viewing who hadn't peviously heard about it. Putting the boot into his cabinet colleague wasn't clever. It was just buffoonish and reinforced a widely held old Tory stereotype. Once that pantomime was over it was on to David Cameron's intended rallying speech. Here was the big opportunity for inspirational leadership in a speech from the heart. Speeches from reminder bulletpoint notes are fine and can achieve that. Those which are almost 100% pre-scripted can not. How is it that we have three party leaders who can not or dare not speak off the cuff directly to the viewers and attendees? The ridiculous practice of pre-leaking of content so as to grab the breakfast TV programmes is partly to blame but it comes at a huge cost in credibility and should be abandoned.
Cameron had a great opportunity for a rousing Prime Ministerial oration, full of simple clarity about the true state of Britain Plc, his vision of where it must go and how to get there. He blew it. His rambling hour over, the Conservatives headed south from Manchester no more inspired than when they headed north and with sighs of relief more than excitement. Hopefully those whose seats lined up with windows (not a Virgin Railways speciality) will have spent the journey not on their Ipads but looking out and seeing the vast differences between the various areas through which they sped before the welcome view of the M25 sped into sight. They must understand and embrace the north, not turn their backs on it.As a practical souvenir of their trip and confirmation that they heard the voice of the north while up there the Party must not be swayed by their media savy and well heeled southern groups into abandoning the for once visionary and highly necessary HS2 project. If that is the only solid thing to come out of their autumn excursion they will at least have nailed something tangible into place. The rest,- for all three parties,- was mainly tedium and did nothing to increase customer satisfaction with what are increasingly being labelled as "the political classes", a group unfortunately slotted in somewhere between bankers and estate agents rather than where the nation's leaders should be.
The overwhelming feeling after all three conferences is that visionary leadership just wasn't there. That explains the Chinese banquet feeling. On now to the new Parliamentary season............
Birmingham and the Lib Dems have been overwhelmingly forgotten. There are big public concerns about unconstrained immigration, the role of the EU in determining British issues, and the abuse of human rights legislation to circumvent what is seen as the spirit of the law. All law is about the balance human rights and obligations and to have a separate code placed on top of that concept looks like removing this essential basis. The Lib Dems, by turning their backs on all criticisms of these things, simply reinforced their own irrelevance as anything but a protest and pressure group, a role to which they are likely to return in the 2015 General Election. Leadership of the nation? No sign of it in Liverpool.
Next up was Old Labour or Labour Classic depending on how it would like to be branded. Their chosen venue was Birmingham, a city which is now really the outer fringe of the south rather than an icon of the north. It's not too far either from the Labour intellectual heartlands of north London and Islington where Milipedia and Peter Simple's Hampstead Thinkers of old took root. The most significant moment, and the only one of fundamental and fundamentalist importance was that Milipedian pause when Ed gave the union carthorses and friends the opportunity to boo Blair and signal that the more inclusive, centrist version of the party which won three successive General Elections is dead and buried. That hopeful and sunny evening of the bussed-in crowds in Downing Street when Blair first came to power in 1997 is ancient history. The booing was the equivalent of scrawling graffiti over the party's most successful recent electoral run of power. An extraordinary but stunningly revealing moment. The party has gone back to its envy filled class resentment homelands. It feels comfortable there. Does enough of the electorate though really feel comfortable with a group which actively and often passionately hates large sections of the community? Again, 2015 looms.
The Tories in Manchester, a place well beyond the ken and interest of many of them, were probably bound to disappoint,-and did. The Theresa/Ken catflap gave the BBC in particular a mouthwatering opportunity to make both look silly and who can blame them for taking it? Wouldn't you? Theresa May was guilty of over egging a minor though true element of a legal case and Ken Clarke seemed to be the only person viewing who hadn't peviously heard about it. Putting the boot into his cabinet colleague wasn't clever. It was just buffoonish and reinforced a widely held old Tory stereotype. Once that pantomime was over it was on to David Cameron's intended rallying speech. Here was the big opportunity for inspirational leadership in a speech from the heart. Speeches from reminder bulletpoint notes are fine and can achieve that. Those which are almost 100% pre-scripted can not. How is it that we have three party leaders who can not or dare not speak off the cuff directly to the viewers and attendees? The ridiculous practice of pre-leaking of content so as to grab the breakfast TV programmes is partly to blame but it comes at a huge cost in credibility and should be abandoned.
Cameron had a great opportunity for a rousing Prime Ministerial oration, full of simple clarity about the true state of Britain Plc, his vision of where it must go and how to get there. He blew it. His rambling hour over, the Conservatives headed south from Manchester no more inspired than when they headed north and with sighs of relief more than excitement. Hopefully those whose seats lined up with windows (not a Virgin Railways speciality) will have spent the journey not on their Ipads but looking out and seeing the vast differences between the various areas through which they sped before the welcome view of the M25 sped into sight. They must understand and embrace the north, not turn their backs on it.As a practical souvenir of their trip and confirmation that they heard the voice of the north while up there the Party must not be swayed by their media savy and well heeled southern groups into abandoning the for once visionary and highly necessary HS2 project. If that is the only solid thing to come out of their autumn excursion they will at least have nailed something tangible into place. The rest,- for all three parties,- was mainly tedium and did nothing to increase customer satisfaction with what are increasingly being labelled as "the political classes", a group unfortunately slotted in somewhere between bankers and estate agents rather than where the nation's leaders should be.
The overwhelming feeling after all three conferences is that visionary leadership just wasn't there. That explains the Chinese banquet feeling. On now to the new Parliamentary season............
Sunday 2 October 2011
UK Party Conference season -Now two down , just one to go,- and no sign yet of a leader or a vision.
Where are we now at two-thirds time in the Party Conference season? Enthused, excited at the displays of new dynamic, forward thinking Britain fit for us and future generations,-a place with a clear view of its role in the world and how to fulfil it effectively and efficiently ? A country whose population can look forward to across the board improvements in life stretching from now way into the future?
Sadly no signs of this yet. Few can even remember what the LibDems had to say or were on about in Birmingham other than that they didn't seem to know how to handle the disproportionate power they wield in the coalition government and seemed intent on going back to their constituencies to prepare for oblivion.
The hoped for Labour revival in Liverpool simply didn't happen. It was back to the future and deliberately so. Ed's pause for the booing of Blair wasn't a mistake. He is politically clever and knew what he was doing and what would happen. He was playing to his sponsors ,the phalanx of old style grim faced union leaders holding 50% of the vote who clapped only things about "a fairer society". By that they seem to mean one with no opportunities for anybody other than maybe themselves with the odd banker or fat cat (union fat cats excepted )lynching thrown in for Christmas Day entertainment. Ed's speech was simply dreadful, full of emotion, pain even, but really about what? The BBC mercifully spared those watching it live 7 minutes of it "due to technical problems". Had the monitoring team just fallen asleep? It was after lunch too. When it came back on air it didnt seem as if anything important, or even unimportant, had been missed. The tone was the same, the utterances and vagueries the same and there was more about good and bad businesspeople who would be taxed or rewarded for their performance on a scale of goodness. In the assessment of this The Party would presumably be prosecutor, jury and judge. Brighter, better, superbly led Britain? Great reasons for you and your children not to emigrate to somewhere lacking all the socioeconomic and class based hangups of Britain ? Sorry, no, none of that from Liverpool.
Last up then are the Tories gathering in the resort city of Manchester this very afternoon. "Social networking" is probably well under way and may have started last night. Maybe even some future Daily Mail headlines (Oh how the threat of The Screws is missed in conference season) got under way. Will the attendees and their leaders look any more attractive to the viewers than those of the previous two weeks or will they just look like a more expensive brand the same "None of the above" we have already seen?
One hopes for the best this week, something stunningly different where minutiae are banished and some big broad strokes followed by some swift big broad actions come stunningly into focus and make us say "Yes!". Will anyone dare to say "Yes we can " rather than "No you can't" or will we get bogged down in more apologies for Dave having been rude or inconsiderate ( sorry, misunderstood by) some lady MPs when he got carried away by the lads and behaved badly in the Commons?
Britain's future isn't about "the cuts", "the gummnt" or any of those dreary things. It's about attitude and a willingness to stop sucking at the dried up teets of welfare dependency and instead to just get up and go for it. It? Anything positive. If not we may as well head for the airport, striking out the " Voluntary contribution to carbon offsetting" option on the booking form as we go.
Now it's back to the box to watch for the great Mancunian revelations and resultant dancing in the streets. Any bets on us being gratified and saying "That was great. Wow, how different! What a change! I can go for that"? The bookmakers probably have an opinion. Over to you to prove them wrong Dave.
Sadly no signs of this yet. Few can even remember what the LibDems had to say or were on about in Birmingham other than that they didn't seem to know how to handle the disproportionate power they wield in the coalition government and seemed intent on going back to their constituencies to prepare for oblivion.
The hoped for Labour revival in Liverpool simply didn't happen. It was back to the future and deliberately so. Ed's pause for the booing of Blair wasn't a mistake. He is politically clever and knew what he was doing and what would happen. He was playing to his sponsors ,the phalanx of old style grim faced union leaders holding 50% of the vote who clapped only things about "a fairer society". By that they seem to mean one with no opportunities for anybody other than maybe themselves with the odd banker or fat cat (union fat cats excepted )lynching thrown in for Christmas Day entertainment. Ed's speech was simply dreadful, full of emotion, pain even, but really about what? The BBC mercifully spared those watching it live 7 minutes of it "due to technical problems". Had the monitoring team just fallen asleep? It was after lunch too. When it came back on air it didnt seem as if anything important, or even unimportant, had been missed. The tone was the same, the utterances and vagueries the same and there was more about good and bad businesspeople who would be taxed or rewarded for their performance on a scale of goodness. In the assessment of this The Party would presumably be prosecutor, jury and judge. Brighter, better, superbly led Britain? Great reasons for you and your children not to emigrate to somewhere lacking all the socioeconomic and class based hangups of Britain ? Sorry, no, none of that from Liverpool.
Last up then are the Tories gathering in the resort city of Manchester this very afternoon. "Social networking" is probably well under way and may have started last night. Maybe even some future Daily Mail headlines (Oh how the threat of The Screws is missed in conference season) got under way. Will the attendees and their leaders look any more attractive to the viewers than those of the previous two weeks or will they just look like a more expensive brand the same "None of the above" we have already seen?
One hopes for the best this week, something stunningly different where minutiae are banished and some big broad strokes followed by some swift big broad actions come stunningly into focus and make us say "Yes!". Will anyone dare to say "Yes we can " rather than "No you can't" or will we get bogged down in more apologies for Dave having been rude or inconsiderate ( sorry, misunderstood by) some lady MPs when he got carried away by the lads and behaved badly in the Commons?
Britain's future isn't about "the cuts", "the gummnt" or any of those dreary things. It's about attitude and a willingness to stop sucking at the dried up teets of welfare dependency and instead to just get up and go for it. It? Anything positive. If not we may as well head for the airport, striking out the " Voluntary contribution to carbon offsetting" option on the booking form as we go.
Now it's back to the box to watch for the great Mancunian revelations and resultant dancing in the streets. Any bets on us being gratified and saying "That was great. Wow, how different! What a change! I can go for that"? The bookmakers probably have an opinion. Over to you to prove them wrong Dave.
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