Tory front
The Guardian recently had a piece on how it was "socially acceptable" for celebs to be "openly" Conservative, citing the usual mix of the arriviste and the hyphenated. It occurs to me that pressure groups and think tanks have headed the same way: increasing numbers seem to be trotted out to argue a version of Tory policy, "trading as" assorted other entities. An especially blatant example seems to be the "Taxpayers Alliance". Notionally their raison d'etre is the already typical-enough rightist whingeing about the government spending money on anything. But recently, they popped up on an item about people having "too many" bins. What the heck's that to do with tax? Are they just venting on whatever the Tory backbenches are excercised about? Or are they more precisely the Daily Mail policy unit at large?
I suppose that I shoukd exempt the "No 2 AV" (sic) campaign, on the basis of it being notionally cross-party. But then they trundle out Charlotte Vere, Conservative MP for someplace unfortunate, to trot out that single transferable vote is "unfair", because "some votes get counted more often than others". I'm inclined to first, yell at the TV at the sheer brazen disingenuousness of pretending that "it doesn't favour our party in precisely the same way as the status quo" somehow rises to the level of "unfairness". Secondly, it causes me to reflect on the similarity of this to the "will the Right Honorable gentleman agree with me"s being gently lobbed from behind David Cameron, when they're not bothering to fly any false flags.
Relatedly the the previous, apparently the BBC has decided that while it's appropriate to continue to refer to Lansley's mandateless, non-manifesto-troubling, top-down marketisation of the NHS as "health reforms", reporters are not to refer to changes to the voting system as "electoralk reform". Huh.
On a lighter note, tonight the UK news is reporting a squabble between the London Olympics local organising commitee, and the British Olympic Council. Both of course are chaired by ex-MP Tory Lords... Let's hope there's a "sensible politicians prospect" outcome to that, by some means...
I suppose that I shoukd exempt the "No 2 AV" (sic) campaign, on the basis of it being notionally cross-party. But then they trundle out Charlotte Vere, Conservative MP for someplace unfortunate, to trot out that single transferable vote is "unfair", because "some votes get counted more often than others". I'm inclined to first, yell at the TV at the sheer brazen disingenuousness of pretending that "it doesn't favour our party in precisely the same way as the status quo" somehow rises to the level of "unfairness". Secondly, it causes me to reflect on the similarity of this to the "will the Right Honorable gentleman agree with me"s being gently lobbed from behind David Cameron, when they're not bothering to fly any false flags.
Relatedly the the previous, apparently the BBC has decided that while it's appropriate to continue to refer to Lansley's mandateless, non-manifesto-troubling, top-down marketisation of the NHS as "health reforms", reporters are not to refer to changes to the voting system as "electoralk reform". Huh.
On a lighter note, tonight the UK news is reporting a squabble between the London Olympics local organising commitee, and the British Olympic Council. Both of course are chaired by ex-MP Tory Lords... Let's hope there's a "sensible politicians prospect" outcome to that, by some means...