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You Just Need To Look At The Bigger Picture

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:56:12 +0100

By anyone’s measurement, and by “anyone” I mean anyone not in the Government, the Government have had a pretty poor couple of weeks. The NHS, the budget (granny and pasty tax), petrol, cash for access. All of these things have affected the Coalitions popularity and our levels of trust in their competence but was it really their fault or was it ours?

If you take a very large number of steps back , tilt your head slightly to one side and look at the much bigger picture, might there be what looks like a plan, if you sort of squint a bit?

Through out the protracted discussions about the carving up of the NHS into handy to easy-to-sell sized pieces Andrew Lansley insisted the Drs and nurses that didn’t support his plans because they didn’t understand them, whilst simultaneously claiming that Drs and Nurse agreed with him and supported him. Yes, the plans are long and often contradictory but the basic premise is pretty simple, sell profitable bits of it off to highest/lowest bidder.

Some have a problem with this but any objection they have are just ideological, can anyone point out to me a privatisation that hasn’t gone well and hasn’t resulted in us being offered a much better service? No, of course you can’t. All of the trains companies are excellent and all of their trains run on time and not a single power company has been prosecuted for the mis-selling of products.

Also private health provision is excellent; just look at council run home care or the way that private plastic surgery clinics have dealt with the faulty breast implant issue, faultless all of them. These same people have a similar problem with deregulation, not understanding that the gentle, benign guiding hand of the market will see everyone safely through. For an example just look at banking, running very smoothly and with absolutely no problems at all.

The Government were also attacked for the way they handled the strike by tanker drivers (yes, technically it didn’t happen but it could have) but again critics have missed the point, creating a crisis out of a potential problem brilliantly covered disappointing figures on the economy and then, by encouraging panic buying, actually helped boast the economy. Brilliant economic planning there by the combined brains of Francis Maude and George Osborne. You need to see the big picture.

One of the driver’s rather feeble reasons for wanting to strike is over one or two health and safety issues including training for newer drivers. They would like them to be able safely load and unload their tankers. As we have long suspected, health and safety has gone too far! First children are forced to wear safety goggles whether they want to play conkers or not and now this. Health and safety has gone made. I mean, it’s not as if anyone has ever been injured by petrol, it is so safe it is almost inert.

Over the weekend a new plan quietly slipped out from No.10 that, perhaps, goes against what they said in the run up to the election. It seems that they have a plan, and would like it passed pretty quickly, for someone somewhere, and remember that this is a right-wing government who like the idea of out sourcing/privatising, to read your Interweb browser history and your emails and texts messages.

Now, the usual suspects have been jumping up and down about “an unwarranted invasion of privacy” and “a police state” (whilst the Blairites have been saying “see, we where right, it’s dangerous out there, it could any of the plebs”) but I would again ask you to look at the bigger picture.

If you don’t want your communications read by someone else as standard what can you do to avoid it? Easy, send it in the form of a letter. What else have the Government done in the last couple of weeks? Why, they have got rid of the price controls that have dictated how much a stamp costs and the post office immediately put their prices up. See now? Big picture. Put people off using the intertubes so that they start using post again. The Post Office makes more money, it pays more tax and helps economic recovery. If that also makes it more attractive when they come to sell it off in a year or 2s time so be it.

The George Osborne pasty problem? To be honest, if I was earning as much money as he does and had an estimated personal wealth of £4million I probably wouldn't eat at Greggs either but look at all the free advertising that that baked goods establishment has had over the last week, sure to drive up sales, the amount of tax that the company pays (if they pay their tax properly) and, ultimately, the economy as a whole. Macro-economics in action.

Really this has been an excellent couple of weeks for this canny government, although I have to admit that the cash-for-access thing (a sort of posh persons cash-for-gold) just looks really rather grubby.

Just remember to look for the big picture.

Confused Express Readers

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 10:56:00 +0100

I know it is easy to mock the Daily Express but I am lazy and it's a Saturday. Is it any wonder that Express readers are confused and angry, take some of this weeks headlines on pensions for instance,

Here is Monday's

And now by Thursday,

And today,

Now I'm confused, which one is it?

Obama and Cameron: A Love Story

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 09:29:57 +0100

David Cameron is in Washington to meet President Obama in order to make him feel important, perhaps Mr Cameron could ask the President how they have created so many jobs over there where as our unemployment is still rising (here's a hint, they went for an economic stimulus rather than austerity and spending cuts).

Anyway, some rather lovely pictures of the 2 of them have been released and, apart from being an absolute success for the out of sight officials, both men are equal in every way right down to the poses and casual jacket-over-the-shoulderness, they are really rather romantic. If I had any skill with photoshop I might have tried to make them into some Jackie like photo love story but I haven't so I won't but I think you can see what I mean.

They met in a park,

They chatted about everything, boys, make up, the protracted Afghanistan conflict,

They left hand in hand, heading into the sunset still miles apart on their approach to the World's economic problems and how to deal with Iran but they are together, that's what is important to them, right there, right now.

Have I Got This Correct?

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:12:30 +0100

So let me get this straight, the government wants to slash housing benefit, which never actually went to the recipient but to theory landlord, in order to save money.

So those people may be forced, if they don't want to become homeless, into taking out a mortgage that they can't afford. The banks, that are filled up with tax payer funded bailouts, don't want to lend anyone (taxpayers) any money, so the government sets up a "get a 95% mortgage" scheme that is backed by taxpayer money to encourage taxpayer funded banks to lend to tax payers who can't afford these mortgages anyway but have to take them out because the government is forcing them to because they are cutting housing benefit, which didn't go to the recipient anyway but to the landlord, in order to save money, is that right?

It's not as if predatory lending by American banks to people who couldn't afford the repayments started of this financial crisis in the first place, that has resulted in banks being full of taxpayer's bailout money that they don't want to lend to anyone, which has, in turn lead to this recession and government cutting spending on things such as housing benefit. Have I got it?

The Boy Done Well

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 22:52:23 +0100

Now, as I am sure you will be aware, I am no fan of David Cameron but the Eton boy has had a good couple of weeks. Given his handling of the British press you would have thought he once worked in PR...... oh now wait. He has played the UK press like a fiddle and they have rolled over and taken it like a dog having it's belly tickled.

Firstly there was his stunt, I said stunt, in Europe, he vetoed something. “Oh yes!” rang out the right wing press with one voice, “our boy is our boy, look at him go, sticking it to the French, telling those Europeans where to go”. See, all you have to do is make like you are flipping the bird to the EU and you get a soft ride in your press if you are a Tory.

There is a lingering question though, did you actually do anything? Did he protect Britain's interests? Did he defend our nation from that nasty Europe? Were they going to vote on a new treaty that night? Well according to Channel 4's Fact Check no, no he didn't and no they weren't. To quote from that site “Let’s remember that Mr Cameron didn’t actually veto an attack on the City.

Greater regulation of financial services wasn’t even on the table. In fact, what was up for discussion wasn’t a treaty at all, and most of the proposals for greater fiscal union between the nations who use the single currency wouldn’t directly affect Britain anyway.”

Has his massive huff saved the Square Mile from a so-called Tobin Tax? Well if the EU wants it they will probably get it, again from Fact Check, “EU tax chief Algirdas Šemeta said that the FTT will be “designed in such a way that it doesn’t matter where transactions are taking place”. So a German or French bank trading in London would still be taxed, and it appears that British financial institutions will have to cough up if they do deal with a buyer or seller in the eurozone.”

Yet if you had read the British press you wouldn't have known this. The right-wing ones were very happy but their only explanation of the situation was “he said no to Europe and that's a good thing 'cos Europe is smelly” and the Leftist press went with roughly the same story except ending with “and that's a bad thing.” No attempt to explain that Mr Cameron did pretty much nothing. Well done everyone.

Then yesterday, Friday the 16^th for those not reading this on the day of publication, he made a speech to some Bishops or other and said something nebulous about being proud to be Christian although not practising that much and being proud to be so. Fine, I don't really care about your personal religion (unless you are just claiming it to score some extra voter points but that's discussion for a different day) but he did described the UK as a Christian nation. Again, an excellently worded statement aimed at getting the best possible coverage in the press that supports him and oh, how it worked. This was a deliberate attempt to get more positive press attention and was completely meaningless in policy terms, the policies of his party are not “Christian” as I understand it, picking on the weakest groups in society is not very nice. Blessed are the meek and the cheese peace maker, good Samaritan helping the poor, beaten up bloke etc.

Anyway, that, again, is not the point, the correct direction of questioning is “are we a Christian nation?” It is interesting that Mr Cameron decided to bring this up in the same week as the British Social Attitudes Survey 2011 was released which seems to indicate that we aren't. Some facts from this survey, 51% of Britains say they have no religion, 62% say they have never been to a religious survey and only 43% describe themselves as Christian. So are we a Christian nation, well, not really. If you ask which is the largest religion in the country then I suppose yes, you can describe the UK as a Christian nation but it would be a bit of a stretching of the truth or, as some might describe it, a lie (or as Fox News might describe it, a fact). More people have no religion than have any religion so we aren't a Christian country really. Most of us have no religion but let's not let that get in the way of a good headline. He has played a blinder.

Without actually doing anything significant Mr Cameron has managed to generate 2 weeks of unquestioning positive headlines in the places that he wants them. This, my friends, is excellent politics. Really, let us all take a step back and admire the work.

Is It All In My Mind?

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:10:47 +0100

Do you remember at the end of summer/beginning of autumn we had that unseasonably warm spell? One last burst of lovely weather before we plunged into the, what always seems like, endless misery of chilly drizzle. It was beautiful and I decided that I wanted to go for a swim in the sea, not something I have done for a since I was a child. There is a very good reason I hadn't done it for so long, I can't swim very well. I am verging on the point of being described as a non-swimmer. This didn't put me off however because I was sure that I had exaggerated in my head how poor I was at swimming. I thought that I must be able to swim a bit and I had been making myself out to be rubbish at it for comic effect and through my overuse of the phrase “Martyns don't float” had created a self fulfilling prophecy.

To cut what I could turn into a long story short (and this really is a short version of what I could have written), with a worried looking Significant Other standing on the shore having dialled two 9s on her phone and with her finger hovering over the 3^rd9, I entered the sea.

This being Weymouth I had to walk out bloody miles to get ever knee deep and, gentleman I'm talking to you here, you know that bit when the cold water laps against what were once your dangly bits but have now shot back inside faster than a startled snail, that bit that was always the worst part about getting into slightly chilly water, well I can assure you that it is still unpleasant.

I finally managed to get waist deep and decided this was deep enough and went for it. It turns out I was correct with my initial memory, I can't swim and I was as bad at it as I though I was. It wasn't just all in my head.

Is there a reason I am telling you of this idyllic sounding late summer afternoon in Dorset? No, not really, just enjoying the reminiscing and a little self deprecation. Ok, maybe there is a reason. My mind can play tricks on me and can be a little unreliable.

I had sort of begun to think that maybe, just maybe, I had been exaggerating in my mind how awful, and possibly evil, the Tories are. I was reasonably young when the last Conservative government were in power and really very young when Margaret Thatcher was PM but never the less I clearly remember the effect that they had on the country.

During the last election I listened to the debates and what all sides had to say and, whilst I would never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever vote Tory, David Cameron did sound a little bit different to other Conservatives, you know, not evil. Maybe they had changed, despite the majority of their MPs being the same people that were in their last pretty much everything and everyone hating administration. Maybe it was only in my head that they were a cross between Death Vader (with Mrs Thatcher being the Emperor obviously) and the demon that possess Regan in The Exorcist.

So they came into power and immediately started cutting stuff. They kept saying, and still keep saying, that they needed to cut the deficit, it is their only economic idea. Cut Government spending and get the borrowing down seemingly forgetting that if we the people don't earn anything or spend anything then they the Government will have no income and will have to borrow more.

They cut spending on libraries, stupid, mean and short sighted but not actually evil. They freed Universities to raise their fees to a maximum of £9000, stupid,mean and short sighted but not evil. They keep saying that the want to role back health and safety legislation and make it easier for employers to fire people taking us back to the time of Victorian mill owners, nasty and clearly profits-over-peoples-lives-because-the-scum-are-disposable but evil? Maybe not. Cutting benefits for pretty much everyone on them, unpleasant but perhaps not evil, however putting out Government sanctioned press releases briefing against Disability Living Allowance claimants making misleading claims about how easy it is to get this benefit is getting pretty damn close. Attempting to privatise the NHS, throttling the BBC, don't know that you could describe these as evil. There are many other things that they have done and said (see pretty much anything thing the Nadine Dorres supports) which are nasty and unpleasant to my left leaning eyes but not necessarily evil. Clearly it was all in my head. They are not evil.

I, for one, am glad that we have cleared that up.

Oh, just one more little thing. Cluster bombs are currently illegal. These are horrible weapons that are made up of lots of little bombs inside a bigger bomb. The biggest problem with them is that many of these smaller bombs (referred to, rather cutely, as bomblets) fail to detonate when they are supposed to thus littering the place they are dropped on with unexploded ordinance. I would go so far to describe these weapons as evil, they kill indiscriminately and they go on to kill and maim for years after the conflict is over but it's OK because the UK is a signatory on the legislation that banned them and no one in their right mind would ever consider rolling back on this would they? No, don't be silly, of course they wouldn't because that would make them actually evil. Oh. According to the Independent “Britain is backing a US-led plan to torpedo the global ban on cluster bombs, in what MPs and arms campaigners fear is an attempt to legitimise the use of weapons that are widely deemed to be inherently indiscriminate.”

So it wasn't just my mind playing tricks on me, Tories actually are evil, not comedy evil, child slaughteringly evil.

That's Disconcerting

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:38:57 +0100

I have just watched the really rather excellent “Eastern Promises” directed by David Cronenburg on surprisingly restrained form, well there is quite a lot of blood and some violence but for a Cronenburg film it's restrained. It is a great film focusing on Eastern European organised crime in London, I won't tell you more than that, I don't want to spoil it for you.

This is not a blog post to review the film, I'm not clever enough, erudite enough or knowledgeable about film enough to do that beyond “it's really good” but I would like to point out one little thing that really put me off whilst watching it.

The film stars Naomi Watts and the ever excellent Viggo Mortensen who is brilliant pretty much everything he does but, having said that, it is he who is the problem. It's not his acting that is the problem but his hair and his wardrobe.

In the film he is involved in acts of rather extreme violence, he gets beaten up, stabbed and has a fight in a sauna whilst naked and, in an early scene, he is having rather joyless sexy with a prostitute and all whilst be-quiffed and suited. In short, he looks exactly like EXACTLY LIKE MARK KERMODE! You know Mark Kermode? Author, TV presenter, award winning contributor to the BBC's flagship movie review show, slightly obsessed with The Exorcist?

This, as you can imagine, is a little disconcerting, watching Viggo/Mark cut a corpses fingers off or seeing Mark/Viggo's tight bottom as he got the bejesus beaten out of his tattooed self. It was just a little bit upsetting.

Should I Stay or Should I Grow? (That is a awful title, sorry)

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:08:29 +0100

So today is the 31^st of October, you know Halloween or the day before the beginning of “Movember” (for those who don't know what Movemeber is I have embedded a link to a website that describes it for you, all you have to do is click on the blue “Movember” and you will automatically be taken there. Basically though it's men getting sponsored to grow a moustache for the duration of the month of November, hence, “Movember”, ah I think that may have rendered the clicking on the link a little pointless as you now know what it is, blast. Someday I will get the hang of this internet thingy.)

So I come before you, the internet, with a question, should I grow a moustache?

I would like to make a few things clear before you make your decision,

1, I don't usually ask the interwebs about life decisions, no matter how small, because I'm not that sort of person, you know the type, loud as motorbike but wouldn't crush a grape in a fruit fight! Wise man that Jay-Z. I'm not the sort of person who feels that they are so important but ignored that they try to draw attention to themselves by asking what they should do with their lives on Twitter or Facebook or, in my opinion even worse, a self obsessed blogger who writes endless about themselves on such mind numbing, spirit crushing subjects haircuts or facial fungus issues whilst not having the self awareness or insight to realise that no one cares. I'm not Danny Wallace.

2, Being bought up as a member of the US Republican party by Southern Baptists*, an experience that is akin to being raised by wolves but perhaps a little more visceral with a tad less howling at the moon and a lot more adopting of a Southern accent in order to end every other sentence with “Praise the Lord!!!”, I believe that anyone who is poor has just not worked hard enough and, therefore, deserves to be poor and anyone who has an illness that they could not have possibly bought upon themselves has bought it upon themselves, I do not give money to any charity at all**. So if I do do it then it will be merely for the deep satisfaction of growing a top lip warmer.

This neatly brings me to

3, Growing facial hair is one of the few joys a middle class, white, English man still has left. In general being a man is rubbish. When god created man*** he made so many mistakes. For instance, why, as I get older, do I need more eyebrow? Or more hair in my nose? I am aware that the elderly seem to feel the cold a little more than young, spritely things like you dear reader or the stereotype of Geordie girls, but thanks to opposable thumbs and various World trade agreements that guarantee that Western companies are able to exploit the peoples of 3^rd World countries as cheap labour, old people are able to buy and wear several cheap coats at once. There is no need for all this extra hair. Also <add you own joke about the poor placement and look of the male reproductive bits and pieces>.

The list of simple pleasures that are no longer available to me is really rather long. I can no longer playful slap a female type person upon the bottom whilst saying “ooh very nice, don't mind if I do” and claim it is a motivational intervention. I can't wonder into a foreign country, infect the “natives” with some disease their immune systems have not encountered before thus wiping them all out and then steal all their pretty and valuable stuff. Although I am still allowed to claim that I will look after their old dusty stuff much better than they will, that's what the British Museum is for. What was their slogan, “Where the world comes to look at it's stuff”? Yeah and then ask for it back.

It's political correctness gone mad. I mean yes, it could be worse I suppose, I could be just about anyone else, the patriarchy is still well in place. Oh and I don't bleed once a month leaving me technically anaemic. Oh and I can vote and I'm not oppressed in anyway I suppose, I'm just being asked asked to not behave like a cock most of the time and give others a fair crack of the whip that I had previously used to subjugate them but that's not the point.

Facial hair growing is a delightful activity, it's just a shame that significant other doesn't like a beardy me.

4, What I look like is not an issue, I will look great. I did once grow a beard (which, obliviously, looked damn great) but I was forced, probably by the EU and human rights legislation, to shave it off. The joy of growing is only slight better than the joy of shaving off the fuzz into a series of amusing and, frankly, downright sexy shapes. I have some photographic evidence if you'd like to see? Of course you would, you have all the normal urges (unless you don't, in which case can we swap numbers?). Ladies and Gentlemen gird your loins and get an eyeful of these.

Admit it, you are slightly turned on now and some of you might actually be pregnant just from the potency of that tache.

So should I grow one? It's not for charity, it's for fun and I will look great.

*this is a downright lie

**also not true

***he/she/it didn't

Oooh, Weymouth looks nice.

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:51:06 +0100

Now I will be the first to admit that I am not the biggest Weymouth. A significant number of it's residents that do nothing but complain and have therefore lead to the council not being brave enough to do anything interesting or exciting for the town. They have allowed it to remain exactly as it was in 1983. They have touched up the faded glamour and have just painted over the rusting cracks. They had traffic going nowhere and buildings that weren't designed as much as copied from the packaging of whatever breakfast cereal was had that morning. It was a dying town but then something happened.

Far away in that big and scary London Sebastian Coe was, single handedly as is my understanding, trying to win the Olympics for the country. Weymouth and Portland was included in this bid, the sailing would be here and it would be great. Our bid was successful, which was nice.

This finally meant that there was money for the long awaited new road between Weymouth and Dorchester. It would be built. When it was finished it would take 5-10 minutes of the journey off of an 8 mile or so trip. Did this make Weymouth people happy when it was completed? Nope, not really. They found things to complain about.

The traffic in the town centre was always a disaster. Anything more than 3 cars in the town and they all ground to a halt. So the council now had the money and the impetus to do something about it. Did the people of this seaside town say “thank goodness that something is happening that might be a little difficult in the short term but will lead to a longer term advantage, good work all.”, umm no. Yet more complaining. Weymouth people fear change.

Weymouth council have been quite stubborn and have carried on and this is a good thing.

We haven't been there for a few months but today, in between the showers, we headed for the front. Well, my my, what a pleasant experience that was. There are lovely new buildings all along the beach.

There is a large new café with a nice decking area. It is called the Boat and you can see why, the shape of the building is reminiscent of an upturned boat and decking area echoes the shipping theme, shaped, as it is, like a bow.

All new bus stops with a sailing motif and street lamps. The falling down shacks that used to sell ice creams and chips have now been either nicely repaired and repainted or completely rebuilt and replaced with new little kiosks for the selling of remarkable similar unhealthy snacks.

All looking pretty good if you ask me.

It is not often you will here my saying this but well done Weymouth, all is looking rather lovely although I'm pretty sure you will still manage to find plenty of people in your town to moan about it, my advice to you is to ignore them, they will be no help as you try and bring your town into the 21^st century.

David Cameron Writes In The Sunday Express. This Can Only End Well.

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 20:54:33 +0100

I know I should stop look at the Daily Express' website, it's not good for me. I have stopped going to the Mail's site because, as we all know, that only exists to drive advertising revenue, Melanie Phillips writes something offensive, for money, everyone has a look, see how many page hits we get, we will now charge you more for advertising space.

Anyway, back to the Express, a paper that “crusades” (there's a word to make a liberal uncomfortable) against moral decline but is owned by Richard Desmond, porn baron (apparently he hates it if you call him that. Oh and anyone else notice the irony in him once publishing a magazine called “Asian Babes” given his papers (he also owns The Daily Star) views on non-White people which I believe can be summarized thusly, “We don't want them coming over here but if they do they must be “babes” and willing to show a camera man their Yah-Yahs and lady hole”. Funny story, a patient once refereed to her woman's secret place as her “Mary”, this amused me as I had just been dumped by someone of that name) and once described Big Brother contestants as “attention-seeking numpties” but now has a section of its website dedicated to the show and only speaks of it in glowing terms since its return to television, coincidentally on a TV channel that is also owned by Mr Desmond, and they have been pushing an article written by David Cameron in today's paper quite hard, getting it quoted on many a news bulletin, so I thought I would have a look.

First up, the Express' website is awful. It's almost impossible to navigate and keeps trying to open pop-ups. There are far to many adverts as well but I digress, oh what a surprise you are all thinking. The Express has 2 versions of the story on it's site, one that contains the full text of what he has written and one that has summarized it and been spun by the paper. One is 16 paragraphs long and the other is much easier to find and is only 3 paragraphs long. Can you guess which one has the most comments on it and therefore, I assume, the most readers? Why, yes it is the 3 paragraph version, how did you guess?

The headline on the print version and the longer piece on the website reads, “Human Rights In My Sights”. Now as a statement of intent that means nothing. It gives us no idea on what the PM is thinking, however the fact that is on the front of the Express does add a little context, I would imagine that he is against them.

In the headline on the short version it says “David Cameron vows to fight hated EU law” by which they mean European Human Rights legislation. Now I have to admit that I think campaigning against Human Rights legislation is a bit odd. Are they saying that they, and their readers, want fewer Human Rights? That they don't want their freedom of speech or religious freedoms? I know they think that these laws only apply to non-Express readers but that isn't true, they apply to everyone in the EU, equally.

The sub-headline on the print version however is “David Cameron vows to fight hated EU law and teach our children “morals and manners””.

What personally? Is he offering to come round and personally spank our, well your, children and tell them not to have sex before marriage? This seems to be trumpeted as a good thing. It is at this point I get confused by Conservative newspapers and some Conservatives in general. What they claim they want small government, although just large enough to execute its citizens if they break some of it's laws, unless it comes to things they care about. They don't want schools to teach sex education, parents should do that but they do want, as does Mr Cameron, schools to instil discipline and morals into those same children which I though was definitely a parental issue. “Well they are not doing it” is the retort, "so schools should". They are not teaching their children about relationships and safe sex either I reply, “well that's different” is the response. They claim that there is too much interference from Government in business, they should be free to get on with it without all this red tape and regulation and Health and Safety legislation is reducing profits. That is of course until a Bank makes a profit, fuel, gas or electricity prices go up or some one is killed at work. Then they are clamoring for more regulations.

Anyway back to “ David Cameron vows to fight hated EU law” which blasts out form the page. He doesn't. I've read it a couple of times. He definitely doesn't. He says things like “we need a concerted fightback against the wrong-headed ideas, bureaucratic nonsense” with no reference to EU law and “and misrepresenting of human rights”. Ah ha. He uses the phrase again in the next paragraph. “I am determined we get a grip on the misrepresentation of human rights”. Fair enough. He offers no examples of when this may have happened of course but but pretty much all of the cases that the Mail and Express use as “examples” of why “human rights are bad m'kay” are people claiming that something is a breach of their human rights and going to court over it, they rarely print the outcome of these cases where the judge says “don't be silly, it's not”. If Mr Cameron is going to crack down on “misrepresentation of human rights” cases by newspapers then I think we can all get behind that.

He goes on to say “We are looking at creating our own British Bill of Rights. We are going to fight in Europe for changes to the way the European Court works and we will fight to ensure people understand the real scope of these rights and do not use them as cover for rules or excuses that fly in the face of common sense.” Ok, most people's common sense is rubbish so that's a bad idea and but don't we already have a Bill of Rights. Um, yes we do, look it's here. It's from 1689 on it goes on about things like freedom of speech in Parliament and certain constitutional requirements of the Crown to seek the consent of the people and as Wikipedia points out “the Bill of Rights is further accompanied by the Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 as some of the basic documents of the uncodified British constitution”. Oh and “the Bill of Rights cannot be altered in any realm except by that realm's own parliament” IE the EU can't make us change it. But if he wants to reduce the number of time-wasting, speculative HR cases then maybe that would help improve the image of this set of laws. Maybe not though.

He makes a claim or two within the piece and, of course, offers no evidence for these claims but, suspiciously, all of his claims seem to fit his agenda, how neat. Things like “We need a stronger police presence on the streets, deterring crime and catching criminals instead of filling in forms or wasting time on phony targets. That is what people want. That is why elected Police and Crime Commissioners is a powerful idea; they will make policing more responsive to what the people in your neighbourhood need, to keep you safe.” Really? I only ask because it seems to be a rotten idea to me. In the US it seems to have politicized the police, with those seeking law enforcement office stating which areas of crime that they think the electorate want them to focus on. This cannot be a good idea. Things that are against the law are against the law and everyone is equal under the law.

“The greed and thuggery we saw during the riots did not come out of nowhere. There are deep problems in our society that have been growing for a long time.” Ah Mr Cameron, where might that greed have come from? Go on see if you can have a bit of a guess. Have there been any Prime Ministers that have pushed an agenda of greed and selfishness? Of profit over everything? Who cut state support for many? I'll narrow it down for you if you need a hand, say since 1978? Anyone come to mind? I was thinking of your parties social and economic wank fantasy, Margaret Thatcher.

We live in a capitalist, consumerist society that promotes conspicuous consumption over all things. Buy things that are new and shiny and pretty, you don't need them and they won't actually make you feel any better but we will tell you that they will until such time as you have actually bought one and then we will tell you it is out of date and you need this newer one to fulfill your life. Now, we know you can't afford it but here, borrow all this money, it's OK, look you can have this card so you don't have to worry about it being real money. Yes, you are in serious debt but everyone is doing it and the interest rate is really low, what could possibly go wrong? It's you patriotic duty to spend your money, it's the only way we can have year on year GDP growth and without that we will have a recession and everyone (poor) will loose their jobs, is that what you want? Do you want to be responsible for you and your friends loosing their jobs? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?! No? Well get out there and buy stuff.

Yeah, I no idea where this culture of greed came from but are you really the best person to lecture people on greed, on wanting nice things? Remember we have seen the inside of your Downing Street kitchen. How much did you spend on that? Was any of it your money? We have seen what MP claimed expenses for. We have seen a cavalier attitude towards the World's financial stability from bankers driven by profit and bonus only. Some might describe those things as greed but not you. Oh no, you think that only poor people, with their faces pressed up against a closed JJB Sports longing after a new pair of Nikes, are capable of greed.

He goes on you know, “a decline in responsibility, a rise in selfishness, a growing sense that individual rights come before anything else.” Is actually ignoring all of the 80's? Selfishness, decline in responsibility, bankers again anyone?

One last thing about this article, as I mentioned before Mr Cameron brings no evidence before us for his claims but there are one or two hyper-links in the piece. Are these links to evidence or supporting claims? Are they links to definitions of some of the longer words or more abstract concepts? No, they are randomly inserted adverts for shiny things that we might want to buy.