Day 3509: Mr Chris Grayling should NOT be allowed out on his own

Tuesday:


Dear the Coalition, please remember that Mr Chris Grayling is NOT SAFE to be let out without a RESPONSIBLE ADULT present to SIT ON HIS HEAD whenever he starts spouting reactionary nonsense. Thank you.

Mr Balloon knew this before the General Election and had him quietly bundled away and locked in the playpen with Master Gideon for the duration.

But this morning he somehow managed to slip his training reins and get into the The Today Programme studio and, before anyone could stop him, started saying he would set BOUNTY HUNTERS on BENEFIT SEEKERS.

Let me just say this: SIGH.

In the firstly place, would it be REMOTELY possible to get through just one week without pandering to the Daily Hate Mail's desire to criminalise poverty and LAY OFF the people on benefits?

Handy BBC graphic shows us that deliberate fraud costs us THE SAME as mistakes by the benefits people. Here is an idea for FREE: it is CHEAPER to give your own staff proper training than it is to employ some consultants to start snooping through innocent folks credit card histories. So sort out your OWN mistakes before you start getting heavy with the people you are supposed to be helping.

And it's not even a good TARGET. As Auntie Jennie points out, tax evasion costs the rest of us FIFTEEN TIMES as much as scamming benefits!

Just one fraud, the VAT "carousel fraud" – where a fake importer/exporter claims to import stuff, say mobile phones or computer chips or, these days, carbon credits, then sells the stuff to a "partner" who then exports it again (possibly without the goods ever physically moving), reclaiming the VAT on the UK purchase while the first fella makes off into the night without paying the VAT on the UK sale back to the taxman – was estimate to cost the British taxpayer between a half and two billion pounds in 2008/09 according to Customs & Revenue's own accounts (large pdf); and it is estimated to cost over SIXTY billion euros across the EU.

Let me put that another way: if you set out to clear up fraud, you expect some success and some failure. If you target Tax Evasion and your successes only succeed in cutting it by 10%, you will still save MORE money than if you cleaned up 100% of benefit fraud.

Just think about what is REALISTICALLY ACHIEVABLE: clawing back just ONE pound in ten sounds like it might be doable; saying you'll clear up all the cheating on benefits which has defied governments from the hard right (Queen Maggie) to the also hard right (Lord Blairimort)… ridiculous.

And as I KEEP on having to say: the more COMPLICATED you make the system, the more likely you make it that SMART CROOKS will get the money and NEEDY POOR PEOPLE won't!


But in the secondly place, what, I mean WHAT in the name of all that is fluffy are we doing hiring so-called "Bounty Hunters" to start electronically snooping on people?

No, I'm not going to make this a gag about coconut flavoured chocolate bars, this is SERIOUS.

I mean did we not just go to a LOT of trouble to get RID of a Government that trampled roughshod over such trivia as the INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNISED HUMAN RIGHT TO PRIVACY?

Government's SHOULD NOT be routinely spying on their own people, effectively treating every benefit claimant as a guilty-until-forever-cos-you're-NEVER-proved-innocent potential fraudster. Hard Labour showed that governments find it all too easy to stumble from treating their voters as potential Stasi-esque informants to collusion in rendition and torture.

As for Mr Grayling, saying "oh, but the information is commercially available" is NO EXCUSE, you slap-headed NINCOMPOOP. So are LANDMINES but that didn't stop us signing a treaty that said it was MORALLY WRONG to use them ever again.

There are LOTS of things that are "commercially available" – pirate videos, Thai lady-boys, black market uranium – but would Mr Grayling suggest that the Government should dabble in any of those? No, actually, let's not go there.

For all that the Hard Labour opportunists were "milking it" over the weekend, we know that the Coalition IS capable of seeing policies that are BLOODY STUPID and changing its collective mind.

So, never mind Dog, the Bounty Hunter; this is a DOG of a POLICY. Let's send it to Battersea Dogs home. Along with the MILK.

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Day 3504: Hard Labour Betray You Again – They have Nothing Left But Their SPIN

Thursday:


Today's Grauniad features a Call to Arms by the ORIGINAL "Phony Tony", Mr Wedgie Benn.

"It is time…" he says "…to organise a broad movement of active resistance to the Con-Dem government's budget intentions."

What the fluff does THAT mean? Strikes? Roadblocks? Burning lorries at major interchanges? A network of underground bunkers? Seizing control of the television channels? Strongly worded letters?

I realise, with "the A-Team" back in action, it's like the EIGHTIES never went away, so it's REALLY no surprise that Hard Labour, like the A-Team, are shooting off all over the place without ever hitting a target.

The former Viscount Stansgate continues:

"They plan the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s…"

That would be the Coalition's plans for savage cuts, just to distinguish them from Hard Labour's "more savage than Thatcher" cuts.

"…which will wreck the lives of millions by devastating our jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services."

Okay, couple of points first: "NHS" That would be the NHS with its spending ring-fenced, guaranteed an increase year on year at least as much as Hard Labour would have given. How is THAT going to be "devastated"?

(Oh, "the reorganisation" – please, DO explain how channelling finding to the front line and cutting out middle management is INEVITABLY bad?)

"Education" That would be the education system that has been specifically protected from the worst of the cuts, and where the Coalition will be INCREASING funds to the schools for the worst off kids under the Lib Dem's PUPIL PREMIUM policy. How is THAT going to be "devastated"?

(Oh, "the free schools" – please DO explain how City McAcademies are GOOD under Hard Labour and BAD under the Coalition; go on, tell us how CHOICE is good under Hard Labour but people volunteering to set up more schools for MORE choice is BAD under the Coalition.)

"Pensions". Those would be the pensions where the Coalition has just RESTORED the link to earnings, something Hard Labour NEVER DID in thirteen years, where in fact the Coalition has gone further with a triple lock protection that will see state pensions rise by whichever is MOST of earnings, prices or 2.5%. How are THOSE going to be "devastated"?

(Oh, the "raising of the retirement age" – please DO explain how you were going to PAY for people to go on living longer and longer with fewer and fewer people of working age to support you all in your evermore extended retirement.)

There ARE going to be cuts, and they ARE going to be TOUGH, but these HORROR stories are really OVERPLAYING the Hard Labour hand.

How painful does it have to be?

It's often said, if you ask someone to cut 10% of their spending, they will grimace and grumble and find a way to do it, but if you ask them to cut a QUARTER of their spending then they will think it's IMPOSSIBLE.

But you've got to remember that the Coalition's proposals are not for 25% cuts THIS YEAR. We are proposing 25% cuts "in real terms" over the five years of the Parliament.

"In real terms" here means "if inflation were zero" or "you're allowed to spend a bit MORE for inflation before you work out your cut".

Look, just suppose we are looking at a Labour budget and they were going to spend £100 this year. Let's assume that inflation is the Government's target of 2%. Each year we will try to spend 4% less.

This year: we spend £96 when Labour would have spent £100.

Next year: we spend £92 when Labour would have spent £102 (that's £100 plus 2% inflation).

The year after: we spend £88 when Labour would have spend £104.

The year after that: we spend £85 when Labour would have spent £106.

In the fifth year: we spend £81 when Labour would have spent £108.

£81 is 25% less than £108. We've actually got to the Coalition's target by cutting JUST 4% each year.

Does that sound a bit more manageable now?

I don't want to oversell this. Cutting 4% in Year 1, I think we could all see that as doable. I'm sure we can all think that there are things that the Government does that it doesn't need to do. But once you've taken out those things, the so-called "low hanging fruits", it's going to get harder to keep on tightening the belt year on year.

Pay freezes will help. Recruitment freezes will help. There's no denying that those things are going to be painful, though: they mean people doing more for the same money, while prices go up (not least because we're putting up VAT!), so they get relatively poorer. And they mean young people not having as many opportunities to enter the workplace. These things are HARD.

But Hard Labour isn't interested in doing things that are HARD; they want to take the EASY route of FRIGHTENING people, and LYING to people to say that it's not necessary, that we don't need to cut spending, that the magic pixies would keep on giving us gold from the end of the rainbow (China).

Oh look:

"The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers' profligacy."

Oh yes, I thought we'd come to this: it's ALL the BANKERS fault. That's Hard Labour's only excuse. You can't blame US; it's ALL the BANKERS fault!

PHOOEY!

Who BORROWED all that money from bankers, eh? Hard Labour, that's who! Mr Frown was spending WAY more than the country could afford for YEARS before the credit crunch. And it was all ON TICK. All those extra jobs in the public sector – paid for with other people's money; all those arts grants and community schemes – paid for on the never-never; all those promised school rebuilding programs – paid for with money that never even existed. Typical Hard Labour, expecting someone else to come along afterwards and pick up the tab for them.

And what about the rest of us? That housing bubble didn't come out of nowhere. It was inflated by people borrowing money against assets that weren't worth it.

Oh yes, the bankers were COMPLICIT – complicit up to their eyebrows, some of them – but it takes TWO to TANGO. People borrowed, and Hard Labour encouraged them to borrow, money to fund a nice life. But it wasn't ever REAL. Sooner or later the money would run out.

We were ALL profligate. Whether it was personally or whether it was because Mr Frown was buying an army of pen-pushers in our name, we all, as a country, spent far too much.

No more boom and bust was a LIE. It was the lie that Hard Labour told to keep us all running those credit cards.

Saying that the recession was "all the bankers fault" is Hard Labour's NEW lie to excuse their own GUILT.

"The £11bn welfare cuts, rise in VAT to 20%, and 25% reductions across government departments target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit, black and other ethnic minority communities, students, migrant workers, LGBT people and pensioners."

I don't know about you, but I don't know that I LIKE my gay daddies being classed as a "most vulnerable" by this hereditary politician. I don't know that I like seeing people bundled up in a SHOPPING LIST of "categories", either, as though we just OUGHT to owe allegiance to the Great Nanny of Hard Labour just because of some quirk or characteristic or other. I've never really liked Hard Labour's habit of putting people on LISTS… it's SINISTER… it's just a short step from that to their habit of ROUNDING PEOPLE UP. And then come the "detention orders". No, I don't like this AT ALL.

Explain to me HOW the Coalition cuts TARGET minorities, signle parents, gay daddies, and AGAIN with the pensioners? We don't even know what the cuts ARE yet, so either you can see the future (so you should have seen this coming) or you are MAKING THINGS UP.

The people who will see the cuts first aren't the people on your list; they are the people who've signed your letter who MAKE A LIVING OFF of the people on your list, those "community spokespeople" and "local organisers" who make little empires out of Government grants. Maybe we'd take you more SERIOUSLY if you were suggesting that we could save a few NURSES jobs by cutting back on some of them.

Or are you just trying to FRIGHTEN as many people as possible?

"Women are expected to bear 75% of the burden."

Oh you ARE just trying to frighten people. "Expected" by whom, may I ask?

"The poorest will be hit six times harder than the richest."

Yes, that was "proved" by the FIB-ian society, wasn't it, and has quickly become an old favourite in the Hard Labour song book. Of course it's total nonsense, because it assumes that every single penny of Government spending reaches the "frontline", that everything they spend OUR cash on has a "cash value" to each and every one of us. And we are worse off by cuts according to how much we would have to spend to make up the difference. So it assumes that if the Coalition cut the armed forces by 10% it assumes we would have to pony up the equivalent cost to provide mercenaries to fill the shortfall. It assumes that if the Coalition cuts a layer of middle management, we would shell out to employ the bureaucrats ourselves. I suspect we might just make do with fewer bureaucrats. (Sorry Lady Mark!)

"Internal Treasury documents estimate 1.3 million job losses in public and private sectors."

And ALSO expect more people to be in employment; you can't just take the job losses and ignore the potential gains. Well you can, but it's DEEPLY DISHONEST.

We reject this malicious vandalism…

Again, resorting to name calling. You don't have an ARGUMENT so you just ascribe ill-will rather than address an alternative point of view. No one is allowed to think thoughts the Wedgie does not allow.

…and resolve to campaign for a radical alternative…

Which would be WHAT, exactly?

…with the level of determination shown by trade unionists and social movements in Greece and other European countries.

Because RIOTS and STRIKES are SO helping put the Greek economy back on a sound footing.

This government of millionaires…

More name-calling; what's WRONG with being a millionaire?

…says "we're all in it together"

We are.

…and "there is no alternative".

No, that was the REAL Eighties; come back from the Time Warp.

But, for the wealthy, corporation tax is being cut, the bank levy is a pittance, and top salaries and bonuses have already been restored to pre-crash levels.

Corporation Tax is a tax on the profits of companies, not on "the rich"; I know it's NICE to conflate the two, but not ALL businesses are super-massive corporations. Most, in fact, are not.

Cutting Corporation Tax is to encourage home-grown businesses to grow and foreign businesses to invest here, so that there will be more JOBS for those working people you claim to speak for. And the Bank Levy is set to be more than the banks save in lower Corporation Tax.

As for the bonus culture, do you see anyone in the Coalition DISAGREEING with you? Aren't we actually doing MORE than Hard Labour to tackle excessive bonuses and force the banks to do actual banking and lend to businesses in need?

An alternative budget would place the banks under democratic control…

Like British Leyland that Wedgie nationalised so successfully in the Seventies?

…and raise revenue by increasing tax for the rich…

which the Coalition did already, see Capital Gains Tax

…plugging tax loopholes

with you there

…withdrawing troops from Afghanistan

er, that doesn't raise any revenue

…abolishing the nuclear "deterrent" by cancelling the Trident replacement.

, um, likewise. Though you'll notice that the Liberal Democrats want Trident to be IN the defence review. Unlike Hard Labour.

An alternative strategy could use these resources to:

No, you've missed the WHOLE POINT. You can't just say you will DIVERT the overspending from things you don't like to things you do like.

I will say this very slowly and clearly.

YOU. WILL. STILL. BE. OVERSPENDING.

Basically, the rest of his no-longer-lordship's manifesto is to OPPOSE for the sake of OPPOSITION because Conservatories are just BAD and the Liberals DON'T COUNT and are SELL OUTS anyway.

It is WORDS without POLICIES. It is POLITICS without MEANING.

How many times have you heard phrases like: the Lib Dems "sold their principles for power", the Coalition is "gerrymandering" or "partisan"; policies are "ideological"?

Which principles are we supposed to have sold out? Is it not the Labour Party's aim to get into power again? Does that mean that you've sold your principles too or that you do not have any?

If we're "partisan" for saying that a system that disproportionately favours the Labour Party must be made fairer, how does that make you NOT "partisan" for opposing that? In fact, how is it POSSIBLE for one Party to be partisan and the other not and still disagree?

And what's WRONG a bit of ideology? We just had a General Election where people supposed chose the ideology that represented them – yes, the outcome we got was a bit of a MIX of ideologies: Liberal, Conservative, whatever-it-is-that-Labour-are-supposed-to-stand-for-now-they've-dumped-Socialism. That's DEMOCRACY.

In a proper argument, these words and phrases ought to MEAN something, but Hard Labour are just using them all as synonyms for "bad".


Hard Labour have NOTHING to say. They are using LANGUAGE rather than POLICY to oppose the Coalition. They want to FRIGHTEN rather than PERSUADE anyone of an alternative. In the absence of something to say, they are just using the only thing that is left to them. SPIN.


That is the REAL irony here: Hard Labour are the ones, by their actions, who are saying "there is no alternative".

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Day 3503: Oh God! Have I Turned into a Tory?

Wednesday:


So, here we are, ninety days into the Coalition and life in Government doesn't seem like it's as much FUN as I expected.

Sure if you're actually IN Government I bet it's LOADS of fun, with all those actual levers of power to pull, but for those of us SUPPORTING a Party that's at least kind-of in power, there's a whole load of uncomfortable accommodating to get used to.

Plus we have to put up with being the butt of all the JOKES on "Mock My Week Up" and the "Not Now Show". Yes, play the World's smallest violin.

The problem isn't so much putting up with the jokes – it's not like they've become any less FEEBLE since the "party conference in a taxi" days – it's more finding yourself suddenly shouting at the radio: "no, you idiot, the Government HAS to do this because…" (a sentence that increasingly finishes with a combination of the words: "Hard Labour", "money" and "wasted all the"), and realising with a bit of a SHOCK that you are DEFENDING the Government. Worse still, you actually AGREE with what the Government is proposing!

Case in point:

For a while now, I have been arguing that we should make tax and benefits SIMPLER.

Only blow me if Master Gideon isn't saying we should simply the tax system and if Mr Iain Drunken Swerve isn't saying we should simplify the benefit system.

Oh crumbs, have I turned to the DARK SIDE?!



I think that this is a simple question of FAIRNESS: people should be able to UNDERSTAND what they are being asked to contribute or what they are getting. Firstly, I think that that give people more control over their government if they can see what is being raised. Secondly, I believe that if people can understand their tax more then they are less likely to try and avoid it.

It is well known that UNIVERSAL benefits have a much higher take-up rate: because there is less STIGMA attached (it's something everyone is owed) or perhaps because there are fewer forms to fill in and hoops to jump through. This means that the BEST benefits for reaching those most in need are the ones everyone can get: pension and child benefit.

The DOWN SIDE of a UNIVERSAL benefit, of course, is that there is perceived to be a lot of "waste" spending money on people who "don't really need it".

(Actually, there's a whole road you can go down about "who DECIDES who needs what",; and about how some needs can be disguised by apparent wealth in a partner or family when it's not being shared about; and about inclusivity of treatment if we ARE supposed to be "all in it together" then telling the better off they don't get anything out and have to put everything in is going to alienate your all-important tax base, who in the end have to PAY for the benefits for other people – i.e. you don't want to convince them to vote for something much FURTHER to the right.)

It seems to me that the simplest you can make the system is one called a "Citizen's Income" linked to a "flat tax".

How it works is this: everyone over the age of sixteen gets an "income" from the state just for living here. Then everything you earn, however you receive it whether in cash or shares or moonbeams, is all taxed at a single tax rate. You get NO personal allowances and NO tax credits, but equally you get no withdrawal of the Citizen's Income: you are ALWAYS better off if you do even just a bit of work than if you do none.

You could suggest a system that was something like £100 a week in Citizen's Income, about the level of the current state pension (or 50% more than a lot of benefits), and a tax rate of somewhere in the thirties, let's say 35% for neatness.

Unfortunately I've tried bashing Daddy Richard's calculator and it's just not that easy to make the maths add up.

Hold on to your Carol Vorderman's; here we go:

If there are sixty-two million people in Great Britain, and let's guess that 16% are 16 or under (that's about right), then £100 a week each for everyone costs: (62m x 84% x 100 x 52) two hundred and seventy-one billion pounds.

If the average salary is twenty-five thousand pounds (pdf), and twenty-eight million people (pdf) are in employment, then the total "earnings" of the country is: (25 x 1000 x 28 x 1,000,000) seven hundred billion quid.

So you'd need a tax rate of 39% just to break even.

But what you've got to remember is that the Government DOESN'T just break even on the tax and benefits, it pays for stuff like the NHS and schools and the army out that tax too.

Estimating a bit here, from last year's red book (pdf), let's say the Government CURRENTLY hopes to get in something two hundred and fifty billion from taxes on earnings (income tax and national insurance). It then spends say a hundred and forty billion of that on benefits (which it wouldn't have to do) and a further seventeen billion on tax credits (which would go) leaving it with net money coming in of about ninety-three billion pounds, so that's money you'd still have to raise or else cut something truly eye-watering.

Ninety-three is a bit more than 13% of seven hundred, so you're looking at a "flat tax" tax rate of (39 + 13) more than 52%.

Ouch.

Actually, there IS a bit of a fix for that: those taxes on earnings include the EMPLOYERS' share of National Insurance (that thing that the Conservatories always call the "jobs tax"). Well, if you DON'T abolish the Employer's National Insurance when you create the flat tax, then you can use that to trim the flat rate down a little, to maybe somewhere nearer 45%.

But that's still quite a HARSH tax rate if you are trying to encourage people that work is worthwhile. Almost every other penny they earn goes to the taxman. And it doesn't give you a lot of room for adding a Local Income Tax on top, either.

And I agree, £100 a week DOESN'T sound a lot to live on, either, particularly when you include the cost of housing (although it would be a bit easier for couples who get two lots of £100). Just think about the GRIEF that the Coalition are getting for limiting housing benefit to £400 a week, and then ponder what it might be like to tell people it will be abolished altogether!

Ouch again!

In pure cash terms, almost everyone IN WORK who earns LESS than the National Average would be better off; almost everyone who earns MORE than the National Average would be WORSE off, and perhaps substantially, although ironically the very highest earners (currently paying 50% tax plus 2% NI and with their personal allowance withdrawn) would actually be better off again. A lot of people on benefits could be a good bit better off; but a lot of people could be worse off too – the system is just too complicated to know without a lot of time on the Treasury Master Computer Brain to work it out.

Here, though, is where I think I depart from Mr Drunken Swerve.

If SOME people do not want to work, if they think they can survive on £100 a week… I say good luck to 'em.

My aim is to LIBERATE people. Primarily, I want to liberate them from the ELEPHANT TRAP BENEFIT TRAP that means that it is often worth more to remain stuck in dependency than to go out and better yourself.

What I DON'T want to do is replace one form of TYRANNY with another: to replace dependency on State handouts with some Puritan ideal of compulsory work.

Now, I realise there IS a risk involved in this: if TOO many people decide that work is too much trouble then the whole system will fall to bits. I have to rely on a good half of the population sticking with the British Work Ethic or it all goes kabloohey.

The way I see it, there will always be people who are not able to work: they might be ill or old or pregnant or caring for someone else or any number of things, and it's really not my BUSINESS to make some MORAL statement about whether they should or shouldn't be working.

This system would make sure that they are looked after. A bit.

Equally, there are always likely to be some people who are too lazy to be bothered or clever enough to work the system who want to skive off. And there ALWAYS WILL BE.

So let's not PRETEND that we can devise systems that can stop that. Particularly not systems that are going to have to be run by an underpaid, understaffed civil service. Making the system more COMPLICATED only helps the scammers – if the people OPERATING the system don't understand it (and at the moment it's so complicated that NO ONE understands it!) then how are they supposed to know when they are being conned?

You can't legislate laziness out of existence, nor can you be clever enough to put cleverest conmen off of cadging off the rest of us, at least not without SERIOUSLY penalising the people who really can't work and don't deserve to be punished for the p-taking of a very few others.

So, at the end of the day, I think I've convinced myself that I'm NOT turning into a Conservatory after all.

Which is a relief.

And which can only mean one thing: if I'm not becoming more Conservatory, then the Conservatories must be becoming more LIBERAL.

Maybe there's hope for this Coalition yet.



Now… what do I do with this nice RED LIGHT-SABRE that Mr Balloon has sent me?

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Day 3501: DOCTOR WHO: Amy's Choice

Monday:


Well, with this now available on shiny silver disc and shiny blu disc, it's way past time Daddy Richard got the last of his reviews of this year's Doctor Woo done.

It's DEFINITELY the best episode for ELEPHANTS.

Dr Woo says Amy's got all ELEPHANT-y; then he mentions an ELEPHANT in the room (it's Mr Rory's pony elephant tail) and there's even a BOUNCY ELEPHANT in the playground. Tops for elephants!

I have to warn you, though, there's a HUGE twist, which Daddy is going to blow in about three paragraphs, so if you're at all SPOILERPHOBIC: look away now!

This has to be a candidate (up against "Vincent and the Doctor") for best story of the season, cleverly interweaving a two-for-the-price-of-one pair of adventures, one inside and one outside the TARDIS, one in the Doctor's world and one in Rory's. It's a thinking story, and as such it may not quite win the kids over immediately in the way that colourful Daleks can, but, as with stories like "Kinda", "Warrior's Gate" or most obviously "The Mind Robber", it may be one to come back to again later.

And of course, it's how to do "Fear Her" and do it right.

Toby Jones as our host the Dream Lord brings a delicious mix of bitterness, melancholy and whimsy to what is, let's say it, a dream of a part. Two parts god to two parts Mephistopheles to one part evil House Elf, he's the best of many, many brilliant things here.

Watched the first time, he's both a diabolical adversary with a witty line in repartee and an intriguing puzzle to figure out: the Doctor knows who he is, so who is he? The Master of the Land of Fiction? The Celestial Toymaker? One of the Guardians? Penry, the Mild-Mannered Janitor…? Something even more fanwanky? Actually, no.

Watched a second time, knowing that he's the Doctor, obviously he's the Doctor, of course he's the Doctor, then he's a devastating critique of our hero's insecurities and self-doubts.

His first appearance is in a dishevelled version of the Doctor's own get up, mocking the Time Lord for his quirks, mocking him for his bow tie as he stands there in a bow tie. It transforms the Doctor's repeated catchphrase that "bow ties are cool" from self-confident assertion of style to repeated self-justification in the face of worrying he looks like a tit.

Then look out for the way that the Dream Lord reveals some of the Doctor's other traits too. He appears as "lord of the manor", a sure sign of the Doctor's Time Lordly arrogance, and as a "butcher", hardly insignificant. And as for the brief glimpse he affords to Amy of himself in his louche dressing gown… well, let's just say that the Doctor's thoughts about her might not be quite so pure and innocent as we might otherwise suggest.

Alex points out how in Rory's dream world, Rory gets to be a proper doctor and the Doctor is relegated to his junior. Except then the Dream Lord enters and promotes himself to consultant, as something nasty in the Doctor's subconscious pulls rank on Rory once again.

He also gives himself away twice. Once in each dream. The Doctor only spots the second time.

In Upper Ledworth, in the butcher's shop the Doctor bolts the door to stop the possessed old-folks getting in. The Dream Lord cheerily unbolts it. He clearly, unambiguously affects the physical world, thus proving it to be a dream. Sadly the Doctor's too busy trying to stay awake to notice.

In the TARDIS, he physically affects the console, releasing them from the grip of the "cold star". Only this time the Doctor does realise the discrepancy and hence blows up the ship, ending the second dream too.

He's almost a metaphor for Brecht's "estrangement technique", constantly drawing attention to the unreality of the situation to try to teach the Doctor to think, to realise that "reality" is as much a "constructed object" and is a changeable as these dream world. Essentially, he's the living embodiment of "history can be rewritten". Mind you, if it is Brecht, it's Brecht staged for the TARDIS crew, with us watching them watching the Dream Lord. The fourth wall is alluded to but never actually broken. It's a play within a play that can have its postmodernism and eat it.

Is there any way that we can say that the Dream Lord isn't the Valeyard?

I mean obviously, putting them into a lethal dreamworld powered by their own darkest thoughts, he's clearly the "despair squid" from "Red Dwarf's" "Back to Reality". The Doctor even quotes the title of that episode the first time they "wake up" in the TARDIS. As Timothy Spall might say: "it's a clue, that; it's a blatant clue".

But as a distillation of every dark thought that the Doctor ever had, he's definitely got the Valeyard's job description.

Notice how the Dream Lord takes the Doctor's characteristics and twists them while remaining essentially true to his nature: the "student chic" becomes decidedly un-chic chic; the cleverness becomes the condescension of a know-it-all; charisma becomes weaseliness and improvisation becomes manipulation; the Doctor's wit, humour, desire to explain become sniping that is positively snide…

"Ask me what happens if you die in reality… you die, idiot, that's why it's called reality."

…And then remember that the Valeyard, tall, gaunt, pale, dressed in unrelieved black and yet still a one for the grandiloquent turn of phrase – "sagacity" – stands as an imperfect mirror to the flamboyant, bombastic, larger- not to mention louder-than-life and altogether alliterative sixth Doctor.

Alex suggests that unlike the Valeyard, the Dream Lord doesn't have "agency", essentially he's just a symptom of the magic fairy dust, not a being in his own right.

Yet he seems perfectly sentient. He's capable of being surprised by the Doctor, which suggests a degree of independence. If his objective is to keep the Doctor and companions trapped in their dreams, does that not leave him taking over the Doctor for the remainder of his lives? And, without getting too much into "The Trial of a Time Lord", the existence of the Valeyard as a separate entity required "special conditions" too, not least access to the "dreamscape" of the Time Lords' Matrix. In the sand dunes, where the Valayard makes his big speech (oh you know the one; it's the "Catharsis of Spurious Morality"), he flits from point to point, his presence discontinuous but his speech carries on without missing a beat. Just as the Dream Lord does around the console room. The Trial, with its visions of past, present and future, is modelled on "A Christmas Carol" where the visitations of the Spirits pass in a single night, again suggestive of dreams.

And, while I do realise that it's a visual metaphor, the brief moment at the end of the Dream Lord reflected in the console presents the possibility that he persists, at least if no more than in the Doctor's mind.

The disturbing possibility occurs that the Doctor may, in fact, have engineered the entire scenario, set this all up in order to "sort Amy out". The appearance of the Dream Lord's face there not as a reminder that he must still exist, suppressed, within the Doctor's psyche, but as a glimpse of guilt for having done it all deliberately. Then the much-derided magic space pollen may have been as much his excuse for all that just happened as it is the writer's.

It's not beyond the eleventh Doctor to be that manipulative, as we have seen at the end of "The Eleventh Hour" and will see again at the end of "The Big Bang".

Because really this story is really about the Doctor's choice, how his subconscious (or conscious?) is given an opportunity to make Amy pick Rory or rather to make her realise that she has already picked Rory.

So the title is a bit of a cheat. To suggest Amy has an actual choice – between the Doctor and Rory – was only ever going to be true if they both loved her back. In which case, Jennie would be perfectly correct when she says: "well why can't Amy choose both?"

But the Doctor doesn't love Amy. The Doctor loves Rose.

He loved Rose for the best part of two lifetimes and we've no particular reason to think he's stopped. It's almost been a bit shocking – if you take away the all-change attitude in the producer's chair – that he hasn't mentioned her, hasn't even alluded to her all this season. And it's not like she wasn't the last person her saw before crashing his TARDIS into Amy's garden shed, so she's hardly out of his mind, unless the regeneration "healed" those particular synapses too…

He sees Amy as a "companion". It's rather lovely at the end to see that he picks companions who are bright and shining people to compensate for the sense of darkness in his own soul. That's such a good and obvious explanation, so much better than ones we've had before: it's not just about him enjoying the Universe by sharing their wonder at the newness, it's not just about him needing someone to stop him, it's about him wanting to be around people who will make him a better person. It may also help to explain, if not excuse, his behaviour towards Martha.

But it does mean that for him there's a jarring mismatch between the way he sees his friends-who-share-the-TARDIS and the sort of people he might flirt with (see Todd in "Kinda" or Jabe in "The End of the World" if you think he's above flirting!). This may in fact be the biggest character flaw revealed in an episode that is all about the Doctor's character flaws.

Or to put it another way: how can you expect anything other than a great big "fail" from the Doctor in an episode where his idea of sorting out relationship issues is to come up with a warped version of himself to inflict hell on all concerned? Isn't the whole point of this story that the Doctor is so screwed up he can't even talk to his best friends without rendering them all unconscious first?

And of course, it's worth remembering that the TARDIS crew are saved by rejecting both choices, rejecting the false idea of choice altogether.


The episode manages to contrive the impression of a "bottle show", one all made on standing sets and with few more than the regular cast, which is of course only half true: specifically the half set aboard the TARDIS. Well, all right, it's all really set in the TARDIS, but I mean the half in the TARDIS-dream. And yet, there's actually quite a lot of location footage and quite a lot of stunt work and quite a large cast of extras in the Ledworth scenes: not just a regular army of old people possessed by the Eknodine – a superbly spooky effect, by the way, the eye, another eye like the Atraxi and after the significance of eyes in the Angels' story, emerging from the mouth making them seem much more "hollowed out" than any Slitheen skinsuit – but also quite a lot of people who the Doctor rescues in the minibus before dropping them off to take shelter in the church, and a good few children, last seen playing in the castle grounds.

It may be off-screen, but how many Doctor Who stories get away with slaughtering a dozen children? Oh yes they do – just count the piles of ashes. And they say Torchwood's "Children of Earth" is grim.

The "Day of the (nearly) Dead" sequences, as zombie OAPs attack with various unlikely garden tools, are both disturbing and hilarious. Rory shows his special charm as he can't quite bring himself to club an old lady until Amy orders him to do it. (Add to that his sweet apologies when he repeatedly bumps her sleeping body up the stairs. And then he goes and drops her head!)

It was a shame that we didn't see Annette Crosby or Arthur "Cully" Cox from "The Eleventh Hour" again, which would have added a touch of verisimilitude to the dream-Ledworth's continuity – but Alex was particularly pleased to see once-upon-a-time Aggedor Nick Hobbs as elderly Mr Nainby. "Aggedor's the one who growls when he's thrown off the dormobile!" he says delightedly.

It's possible that the name of the home where the unnaturally-long-lived oldies reside, "Sarn", is another clue, being as it's also the name of the planet in "Planet of Fire" where you can find a longevity-inducing volcanic gas.

The twittering of birds as the Dream Lord shunts them from one version to the other seems to be a misdirect to make the Ledworth world seem the more real one – after all, they hear the birdsong in the TARDIS too. But then, almost magically, the rain in Ledworth turns to snow, as though the cold from the "cold star" is bleeding through from the TARDIS-dream to the Ledworth reality too.

Of course, it's not a "cold star at all; it's an accidental bit of precience, as it's the CGI sun from "The Big Bang" with the yellow taken out.

This blending of dreams and reality is, of course, where the episode perfectly captures the essence of "fairy story" where Stephen Moffat has said he sees the series as being. The inherent warning to "be careful what you wish for", the way that things which seem too good to be true really are, the way the "bad fairy" is vanquished by trusting to what you believe, slaughtering the cute kiddies: these are all very Grimm tropes.

And yet, ironically, this is also the story that has the harshest words to say about believing life is like a fairy tale.

"What's the good of you, then?" Amy protests when the Doctor admits that he doesn't save everybody every time.

It's the cry of the little Amy who still keeps all of her childhood dolls and drawing of the raggedy Doctor, who still plays dressing up games, who could never bring herself to grow up, because growing up means leaving the fairy tale world and facing the harsh world of no happily ever afters.

In a sense she accepts marrying the man she loves, but still rejects the fairy tale ending of the wedding dress. In a way, that leaves Amy's Choice unresolved, and quite right too. In traditional drama, the midpoint – as this is – of the "dramatic W" should see events build to an anti-climax, which leaves tension unresolved until the true climax at the end. And Amy's Choice will remain unresolved until the end of the season, which this episode strongly foreshadows.

Final thought: In one dream, Rory dies. In another dream, the TARDIS explodes. And then they all wake up. I'm just saying.


Next time… You can thank your lucky (cold) stars that I've already done Master Chibnall's festival of all things Pertwee, and we can move straight along to a review of the whole season.

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Day 3495: Nine Good Things About Saying YES to AV

Tuesday:

1. It recognises that our VOTING SYSTEM is BROKEN

2. It gives MORE POWER to voters

3. It lets more people feel that they have an MP they voted for

4. It lets people choose HONESTLY with no tactical voting

5. It gives voters a choice between PEOPLE not PARTIES

6. It makes politicians talk to people who aren't in their "base"

7. It makes politicians talk to each other, encouraging grown-up politics

8. As far as what the voter has to DO goes, it's exactly the same as voting with STV

9. It's on offer and STV isn't


The time for grumpy acceptance is over. Let's stop looking for the ways that the glass is half empty and start looking at how it is half full.

The AV referendum ISN'T about getting proportionality; it's NOT about Fair Votes. So let's stop COMPLAINING that it isn't what it isn't.

But what it IS is about giving more POWER to voters, and showing more TRUST in voters.

Honestly, the First Pass the Port crowd are going to be campaigning on a platform of "we don’t trust you to count up to five". Do you REALLY think that that's an unbeatable message?

Liberal Democrats DO trust people; that's why we're going to ASK them what they want (and that's why Hard Labour's so-called offer of instant AV with NO referendum was really toe-curlingly EMBARRASSING!)

Anything that moves away from tactical voting is GREAT. At the very least we can see who the voters REALLY want to vote for by looking at their first preferences and that might give a real boost to the Parties that currently have no representation at all. And that's got to be a boost for democracy. People can vote for real policies that they want. People do NOT have to vote for EVIL parties as a "protest" vote.

Anything that moves away from LISTS imposed by parties is GREAT. AV is about choosing YOUR OWN list of people and the order that they stand in, not one imposed by anybody else. And that's why the second preferences and third preferences… and LAST preferences… also tell us the sorts of people that people want in Parliament. And remember, First Pass the Port is a closed Party list system with a list of ONE. (That ISN'T true for AV – you probably won't, but you CAN have more than one person standing from one Party… or you could, entirely hypothetically, have two people standing for "the Coalition"… and people can choose between them for themselves.)

And anything that moves away from the status quo is more than GREAT it is FANTASTIC. We KNOW that people want CHANGE; they VOTED for CHANGE at the general election, and – no matter how queasy the public might be feeling about the Coalition… no matter how queasy some of US might be feeling about the Coalition – change is what they got: a different kind of government that NO ONE quite understands yet.

It's EASY to be FRIGHTENED of change. It's EASY to listen to all those voices saying how all sorts of scary and nasty things are BOUND to happen because of what the Coalition is doing. It's EASY to LOOSE FAITH in people.

Because change is HARD. Freedom is HARD. Being a Liberal is HARD.

The EASY thing to do is to promise to wrap everyone up in cotton wool and tell them fibs about how everything is all going to be all right; the really difficult thing is to tell them that THEY have to make the choices and then to TRUST them to make the choices and to FOLLOW the choices that they make.

And yes, that means following their choices when people give the Conservatories SIX TIMES more seats than us, or rather when they give the Conservatories ONE-AND-A-HALF times as many VOTES as us. More people voted for Conservatory policies so, grit your teeth people, Conservatory policies ARE going to happen.

Sometimes you just have to hold hands with the CAT-MONSTER and hope that it doesn't BITE OFF anyone's head!

If you don't want that to happen AGAIN… tough. The only way to prevent Conservatory policies EVER happening is to institute a socialist dictatorship, and we KNOW how successful THOSE are. If you believe in co-operative politics, then SOMETIMES the Conservatories are going to have to get a go.

But if you want to make sure that they have to BEHAVE, that they have to PLAY NICELY and JOIN IN with everybody else… well THEN you have to support a change in the voting system.

It WON'T stop things being horrid – but that's because the economy is bad-worded beyond repair – but it will start to heal our democracy.

So enough with the blubbing over STV.

Let's go out and WIN this!

PS:

I wrote this BEFORE seeing that Mr Fred Carveup had posted quite the opposite view on the Liberal Democrat Voice. Great Minds, it seems, think completely unalike.

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Day 3493: Sherlock aka Elephentry, Dear Watson

Sunday:


"Sherlock" is a new series from the BBC based on the famous novels of Mr Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: "The Adventures of Professor Doctor Who, er, Challenger, er, What?"

It's a really classy looking production, sharply directed and edited, beautiful and clever to watch, and with an excellent cast: Mr Benedict Cucumberpatch emptying the cabinet of quirks as the original maverick detective and Tim from the Office stoically baffled as Dr definitely-not-his-boyfriend Watson.

But the trouble with writing for a genius is that you don't get any excuses.

So it's inexcusable when Mr Sherlock is slower than the audience.

He really SHOULDN'T fail to deduce that the killer is a cabbie at the point where he's extemporising about "being invisible in a crowd" and "hunting in the city streets". After all, his Eighteen-eighty incarnation worked it out! And so did Daddy. Mind you, it was probably the director's fault that the moment was intercut with enough TAXICABS to make it so BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS!

Nor should Mr Sherlock be so STUPID as to start deducing OUT LOUD who's just shot the killer dead, and then have to say "oh just ignore me"; not after all the trouble you've gone to to establish his internal monologue by clever means of on-screen text: surely, Mr Sherlock should SILENTLY deduce that it must be Watters and THEN say to Lestrade "I have absolutely no idea"!

And, of course, you really SHOULDN'T have the "master of observation" repeatedly overlook the obvious when Mrs Hudson is trying to tell him about the taxi that is waiting for him, and the killer is standing RIGHT THERE. Yes, yes, it's very funny, just like all those times Dr Woo ignores K-9 when he has a vital warning or clue, but Mr Sherlock is NOT Dr Woo… oh.

You could really tell that this was a realisation by the Mister Moffster, the man who is currently behind Dr Woo. A lot of the great detectives mannerisms were VERY Dr Woo, although actually rather more Mr Dr David than Mr Dr Matt – particularly the "wooo, she was sooo brilliant" bit, but also a lot of the "I don't mean to be rude but I'm more intelligent than your entire species put together" was doing the "rude and still not ginger" Doctor. Mr Sherlock describes his rudeness as being a sociopath not a psychopath – though in fact the words have the same meaning, and "sociopath" is just what you call a "psychopath" when you don't want to annoy them – but really, his obsessive observation, high-functioning intellect, and lack of social awareness rather place him somewhere on the autistic spectrum but I guess that doesn't sound sexy enough for television.

The brilliantly clever direction is, I had to admit, clearly school of "Hollyoaks". No, I'm talking about the use of onscreen text for text-messaging and visualising train of thought, not the "oh she's a sister"/"oh you're his brother" school of… hang on, they did those too.

Thankfully we guessed that Mr Mark Gatiss was laying it on so thick was because he was going to turn out to be brother Mycroft and not Mr Professor Moriarty. Because casting yourself as brother Mycroft would self-indulgent enough, Mr Executive Producer, but the thought – that you were CLEARLY trying to double-bluff us into thinking – that you could be Mr Professor Moriarty sends shudders up the spine. And not in the GOOD way!

As it happens, we'd just found ourselves wondering how Mr Martin Freeman could actually DO acting, when he is blessed or cursed with such a totally "everyman" face, only then we saw him in a scene with Mr Mark Gatiss and thought: oh yes, he IS doing proper acting, and doing it brilliantly; you can see it compared to "that thing that Mr Mark Gatiss does".

Tell me this: how is it possible for Mr Mark Gatiss to do "that thing that Mr Mark Gatiss does" when he's just STANDING THERE? I don't know, but he did it and booted all sense of naturalism right out of the window for a good few minutes.

It isn't as though he can't DO acting: there are LOTS of other characters from "The League of Gentlemen" that he can do, to start with, and they managed to wring a decent performance out of him in "Poirot", but most of the time he just wants to do "comedy sinister toff". Well I say "sinister"; he's about as threatening as air. And I say "comedy"; it's just not funny…

But that visual "trick" of placing "post-it notes" of Mr Sherlock's thought processes over the "real" picture is reminiscent of the "the Doctor working it out" sequence from Dr Woo's "The Eleventh Hour" (where a rapid sequence of stills tracks the Doctor's mind's eye as he goes back over what he's seen). Although it's also reminiscent of Mr Guy Ritchie's technique of having HIS Mr Holmes play out a fight-scene in his head to work it all out before implementing it in a flash.


A lot of this episode, "A Study in Pink", comes direct from the original "Holmes meets Watson" story: "A Study in Scarlet", including the horrible history repeating itself of Mr Watson being returned from the war in Afghanistan; occasionally inverting it as with the "Rache/Rachel" clue – in the Conan Doyle version: Lestrade wants to look for a Rachel, but Holmes identifies the word as German for revenge; this time around Holmes identifies and rejects the German possibility and reverts to the incomplete name.

The Mister Moffster is QUITE RIGHT to bring Mr Sherlock right up to date. The Holmes adventures were never written as a period piece, but were always "cutting edge". The character is genuinely timeless, as Mr Basil Rathbone demonstrated by bringing him forwards to fight Nazis in the Nineteen Forties. Indeed most Holmes adaptations up to that point WERE contemporary rather than historical; it's only later that the whole Victorian setting became a part of the fixtures.

And most of the updating works. Daddy laughed out loud at the self-aware silliness of "the three patch problem". But not all.

When it comes to the KILLER, Mr Jeffthecabbie, the fatal aneurism and the belief that Mr God loves him and his helping him beat the odds both come from the original Conan Doyle; but by getting rid of the "Study in Scarlet" backstory – and, to be fair, all that stuff about MORMONS that is probably racist or something – it turns the character into that most TAWDRY of modern TV TROPES: the motiveless serial killer. Who then sort of has a motive that he's taking revenge (even though "rache" was a red herring) for being dying by "outliving" the people he kills. And sort of has another motive that he's being paid to bump off people at random to give his sponsor a cheap thrill (or was there some connection between them after all, that Moriarty wanted them all dead?).

Anyway, Mr Jeffthecabbie's modus operandi is to point a (fake) gun at his taxi passengers and make them chose one of two pills, one of which is poison.

It's been widely suggested, by everyone from Daddy Alex onwards, that BOTH pills are poison and Mr Jeffthecabbie has taken an antidote or built up an immunity over many years, what you might call the "Princess Bride" solution.

Others have taken the analysis of language used by Mr Jeffthecabbie – make the RIGHT choice, get the RIGHT pill and you live, did you get it RIGHT – to infer that our cheeky killer is trying to Derren Brown his victims into picking the poison pill. (It's almost impossible to see how this could have been done WELL – it certainly wasn't done by the banal conversation between killer and detective that we saw. Perhaps a direct to camera monologue by Mr Jeffthecabbie, perhaps scripted by the REAL Derren Brown, making the viewer take the Mr Sherlock role, and leave you with a lingering shot of the two pills and deciding for yourself which you would chose…)

Or possibly he was genuinely just NUTS. And LUCKY.

Irritatingly, the play doesn't bother to give us an answer.

And it would have been so easy: it would have been nice to have Mr Sherlock SAY that "obviously" both pills were poisoned.

Or, uncomfortable as it might be to see Mr Sherlock using TORTURE – crude infliction of pain; it OUGHT to be beneath him – you could definitely see him ruthlessly saying: "well, you're dying anyway and I've got to know if I'm right…" and forcing the pill into Mr Jeffthecabbie's shocked mouth. Which would be a "modern updating" of the "he tries the pills on a dog" of the original.

When he gets up and walks away from the poison pill game it's BRILLIANT. But then Mr Jeffthecabbie tries to talk him into taking the pill anyway: "because he's got to know if he was right", which is a dreadful misreading of the character of Mr Sherlock.

I mean, if he genuinely WAS a sociopath (which he isn't!) then "playing the game" is exactly what he WOULDN'T do, anyway.

But at this point Mr Sherlock is ABSOLUTELY NOT going to risk his life on a game of "who's got the biggest swinging BRAIN" by taking the poison pill for one very good reason: Mr Jeffthecabbie has just giving him a MUCH MORE INTERESTING PUZZLE.

Now it COULD be a mistake on the part of the crazy killer.

Seriously, if Mr Sherlock's only reason for playing the game is that he's BORED, then saying to him "there's a name but I'm not going to tell you" is EXACTLY the wrong thing to say! Woo, look, great big mystery. But still, life's so dull isn't it. I mean REALLY???

But then Mr Sherlock goes and gets TEMPTED so it's clearly a mistake on the part of the WRITER.

So let's address the writing.

One hugely significant thing missing from the show – one that might, ironically, have helped the writer avoid his usual habit of making the male lead a gawky self-parody and the female lead into a Sue Virtue analogue – is the almost complete lack of WOMEN. Or "women who aren't dead" anyway. Yes, there's a token lady police officer, who is mean to "our hero" when he outs her liaison (wrong in SO many ways) with the police pathologist. But she's not really an IMPORTANT character, is she. And brother Mycroft's airhead assistant barely counts as a character at all. And all the other women are DEAD.

Yes, of course, the ORIGINAL Holmes adventures tend to be a little, you might say, "female-lite"; but THEY were written a hundred and twenty years ago by someone who had never seen Sarah Jane Smith. What is Mr Moffat's excuse?

But there is, if possible, an even BIGGER absence. By throwing away the backstory, that tedious second half of the novel, you are also throwing away Mr Sherlock's METHOD.

Detection by logical deduction depends on pattern-spotting. Holmes EXCELS at this because he has trained himself to the peak of observation (except where Mrs Hudson is concerned, clearly) and is a genius at making connections.

It's a "unique selling point" that hasn't really been matched since: Poirot uses his "psychology"; Colombo a sort of dogged determination; Morse seems to wait until all the other suspects have been killed off and whoever's left is the killer; Wallander may or may not solve the crime, I'm just too depressed to find out… but Holmes's one-man CSI trick of spotting the tiny but significant details and extrapolating meaning from them is unbeatable because it's basically REAL police work but with a superpower that lets him do all the hard dogsbodying of real police work in an instant.

In "A Study in Scarlet" he solves the case by working out what the connection IS between the two dead men and the killer; that's the whole point of the second half of the book. By getting rid of that connection you lose the heart of the story. It's not just BORING that Mr Jeffthecabbie is a serial killer; it misses the whole POINT.

Which is why the ending suddenly becomes rather contrived, relying as it does on the so-called genius serial killer NOT turning off the mobile phone that he knows can (and indeed DOES) lead his pursuers right to him but instead deciding that the most larks would be to abduct the person who's close to catching him from under the noses of the police. Like you do.


Don't get me wrong. "Sherlock" is a work of GENIUS. But that genius was Mr Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Holmes and Watson are brilliant characters in their own right, and they are brilliantly realised by two hugely talented and charismatic actors. Holmes method of deduction is a brilliant hook to hang the detective stories on, and the story is vividly brought to life by clearly extraordinary and inventive creative people.

And so much of the writing, the characterisation, the nods to the source material, is spot on. There is a sense of humour and friendship and even reality to the proceedings that leavens some much-needed light through the darkness of a very dark story, in a way that, for example, the recent troubled "Luther" did not. (Yes, I said some nice thinks about "Luther" and the very next week they LITERALLY had a woman in a fridge. Sigh. Sorry.)

It's clearly a huge hit with the viewers and the critics and Twitter seemed alive with positive responses last night. And we'll definitely be watching again.

We'd just rather there were fewer of the, er, elementary mistakes.

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Day 3490: Popping the Question

Thursday:


"Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the 'alternative vote' system instead of the current 'first past the post' system for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?"

Yes!

By which I mean: No! Not really. I want STV (Single Trunk Voting) not AV (Awful Voting). But that's not on the cards and this is a change at least vaguely in the right direction and better than a poke in the button eye, the like of which cannot be said of First Pass the Port, so grudgingly and grumblingly, oh all right then.

Next!

Day 3487: A Blog for Florence and Precious Mhango

Monday:


Tonight (5.30-7pm) there is to be a VIGIL in Glasgow by people who want the British Government to behave like this is a CIVILISED country and allow a family from Malawi to stay here rather than deporting them to face separation and misery. Auntie Caron is among those attending and I will be there IN FLUFFY SPIRIT!

Glasgow is happy to welcome to Ms Florence and Ms Precious and we all should be too.

There are LOTS of good reasons for letting them stay, but I only need ONE: Great Britain is BETTER because people want to come here.

People want to come here because we have VALUES, values of generosity and hospitality to those who are in need, values of welcome to those who want to contribute to our society.

Let's not make this a mean and nasty place.

Please lend your support as well.

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Day 3481: Hard Labour Gets an "F"

Tuesday:


So Harriet the Harminator suggested that Hard Labour's Election Campaign be brought to you by the letter "F"*.

Oh, how quickly Hard Labour went from DOWNING STREET to SESAME STREET.

Let's look at all the MUPPETS: there's Oscar the Grouch in Number 10; his predecessor as self-styled superstar Miss Piggy; the Millipede podlings are so Bert and Ernie; Lord Prescott of Flummery just IS Cookie Monster; and Mr Mandelbrot is the Count Von Count. At least I THINK they said "count"!

And… HOLY CREPE SUZETTE is that Lord Mandelbrot appearing as the Prince of Darkness in his own fairy tales???

Once Upon a Time…



[Rubs button eyes!]

The King Who Couldn't Smile…



If REALITY has a FOURTH WALL I think it's just been BROKEN!


Yes, this is the news – if you can call it "news" when we've already read all of this in Mr Andrew Yawnsly's "The End of the Party" – from the former First Lord of Everything Else that all was not cute and fluffy in the Hard Labour bunker.

Other "revelations" include that Captain Clegg told Mr Frown he had to go, and that Lord Blairimort thought Mr Frown was "mad, bad, dangerous and beyond redemption".

Lord Blairimort himself – busy between bouts of getting paid millions of pounds writing his own book, "The Journey" (no doubt destined for the "romantic fiction" shelves) – is said to have been FURIOUS at being GAZUMPED by his former spin doctor and is alleged to have tried to pull strings to get Mr Mandelbrot's book dropped, thus totally disproving any stories about him STEWING in IMPOTENT FURY and then DOING NOTHING.

None of which has prevented the Former First Fractal from getting his retaliation in first in "The Times". We can't link to his serialisation because it's behind the firewall; that's not Murdoch – it's the flaming River Phlegethon that wards entry to the Seventh Circle of HELL!

Lord Blairimort's OTHER hired killer media spokesperson, Mr Alistair Henchman, has been QUICK to open his OWN diaries claiming that these REFUTE the word of the Dark Lord. These of course would be the same diaries where the entry for 24 September 2002 reads:

"absolutely did not sex up any dossiers today"

So, a totally credible historical document there, I think we all agree.

And I am SURE that Lord Mandelbrot will have appreciated the suggestion that he should have cleared his diaries past Mr Henchman before publication in the spirit in which it was offered.

Of course, the MAIN fallout from these radioactive reminiscences has been the response from all the candidates to inherit the Crown of Frown (slightly dented; it may have been thrown across the room). Finally, the infamous five have something to unite them. As well they might. After all, as Mr Yawnsly himself points out, they're all implicated up to their eyebrows.

Well, except from Ms Diane Abbott-and-Portillo. Though as Hopi Sen – the "Iain Dale you've never heard of" of the Labour movement – puts it:

"She was not up to her neck in the battles of the Blair-Brown era […] She was up to her neck in the battles of the Kinnock era instead."

That's "hypocritical", "fratricidal" and "past it", all in one put down; finally someone on the left with a grasp of "economy".


I really AM going to have to stop shooting these fish in a barrel and talk about some of the RUBBISH things that my own side are doing – stares hard at the Home Office, and the gap where funds for the Green Investment Bank are supposed to be, and the VAT rate – but you just CAN'T pass up material like this!

PS:

*Insert your own jokes here. Mr Alistair Dalek certainly did.

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Day 3478: DOCTOR WHO: A Fishy Tale

Saturday:


For anyone NOT watching the World Final of Footballing (if you're Spanish) or Kick-Boxing (if you're Dutch) – i.e. Generation "SQUEE!" – this weekend was VAMPIRE weekend, with the release of the latest in the TWIGLET saga…

…personally, I don't understand why "wait till you're married then he kills you" is a more CHRISTIAN message than Harry Potter's "love is better than power and murdering people tears your soul apart", but apparently angsty vamps go down very well with the League of Abstinence…

…so this seems like the right weekend to make Daddy do the Vampires of Venice review! Now available on shiny silver disc AND shiny blu disc, too! The, er, episode, not Daddy's reviews… RUN VT!

"C" is for fish, as the old pun would have it, and the first thing we see in Venice is the carved curved fish that forms the monogram "C" for Calvierri on the back of Signora Rosanna's throne. Essentially, the "answer" is right in front of you in that first image: this is, of course, a school of fish. And then the rest of the episode is a huge exercise in misdirection.

And jolly good fun it is too.

Almost in spite of the arc-ish framing device of taking Rory and Amy on a "date", almost in spite of the intruding mentions of cracks and silences, it feels the most simple and self-contained story so far.

(I'll allow "The Beast Below" on a challenge if you want, but to me that feels very much continuing Amy's story rather than wholly a story of its own, while of course the Mark Gatiss episode is obviously no more than laying the groundwork for revamped Dalek escapades and as I said before "Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone" feel very much parts four and five of "Doctor Who and the Cracks in Time".)

The teaser clip shown on Jonathan Ross was rightly picked from this episode, showcasing the brilliance of Matt Smith as the Doctor as he is surprised and delighted by the "creepy girls with no reflections" and tosses in a fanboy-pleasing glimpse of William Hartnell on the Doctor's library card. (Yes, Alex and I were those fanboys.) I would contrast the Doctor's scampering glee at real living vampires, cavorting around them as though his body is going out of control along with the words coming out of his mouth, with his "woah, aren't you magnificent" reaction to the real living werewolf in "Tooth and Claw".

Helen McCrory as the wicked but tragic Rosanna is a captivating central performance, often holding the eye with her stillness – sitting in her throne, kneeling and "rehydrating" from a chalice: these moments are almost tableaux. And for all of her vampire trappings, she is really much more of a fairy-tale wicked queen, holding the city in thrall by her magic and putting the girls under her spell. Even the "glamour" of her perception filter – revealing the ugly witch underneath – fits. Mind you, "ooh grandma what big teeth you have" is also there in the mix.

She has some marvellous confrontations with Matt's Doctor. There's a lovely, almost flirtatious sense that the two of them are of an age, and that their age is ancient, particularly in the moment where she offers the Doctor an alliance with the hint that it may be of the matrimonial variety. "Think of the children," he whispers.

As a "grande dame" of Venice she is reminiscent, if not quite so grand, nor quite so dissolute, of the character Miss Eleanor Lavish from the early Paul McGann Big Finish Adventure "The Stones of Venice" by Paul Magrs.

("The Stones of Venice" is almost literally three parts lush, elegiac tragedy to one part "oh, they live". Yes, another Paul Magrs where he muffs the ending: he may be a genius and a lecturer in creative writing but you do occasionally want to bang him over the head with a book on "how to write". Funnily enough, it also features a breed of fish-men living below the canals and finishes with the city being cursed to sink below the waves. In honesty, though, they could hardly be more different: "Stones of…" is a lament for lost love, and the foolish and selfish things that people do even when it can and does lose them the most important thing in the world, with a heartbreakingly beautiful performance from Michael Sheard as Duke Orsino. Oh and never mind what Wikipedia says about essays by John Ruskin, "The Stones of Venice" is also the title of an episode of "Jason King" guest-starring Roger Delgado and don't think Magrs wouldn't know that.)

Meanwhile Alex Price, who's been voicing the Doctor Who Confidentials this year, has (forgive me) a whale of a time playing evil mummy's-boy Francesco. (Although since his appearance as a ghost in season one of Toby Whithouse's "Being Human", we ended up calling him "fish-Gilbert"; Gill-bert groans Alex).

Oh, and I must say I do like Simon Gregor as the obviously all-too-human Steward of the House of Calvierri who does a lovely boggle-and-recover when the mistress turns into a giant fish in front of him and is last seen skipping town dragging a sackful of looted gold.

The visuals are gorgeous, too. Yes, even the silly fish.

They've gone for a much more muted colour palette, lovely pale marble of Venice, a lot of sea greens, obviously, but perhaps more daringly some fluorescent purples as the Doctor waves around his ultra-violet light stick.

The "vampire girls" of the Calvierri school have a real "Hammer" vibe going on – I mean big blousy "Hammer Horror" dresses, emphatically not MC Hammer big trousers. As the Doctor says, fish from space have never looked so buxom. Those vampire teeth are a bit of a triumph, too, though I'm fairly sure they would leave rather more of a hickey than the traditional two puncture-wound bites that we see on Amy's neck with the Doctor sonic-ing them closed. And do fish really have teeth like that? ("Don't tell him Pikes," heckles Alex. "Stupid boy.") Oh but if I'm being picky… having gone to the trouble of explaining all the vampire attributes via the technobabble of the perception filter… suddenly we get vampire girls floating outside the window. Are they flying fish now?

Of course, if they'd surprised us with a reveal that the house was now under water, they could have used that scene to establish that Rosanna can sink the buildings of Venice into the lagoon one by one… oh, who cares, it's just a magnificent image, isn't it.

Trogir in Croatia, allegedly built by the Venetians, is a real find, standing in for Venice without any of that intrusive modern tourist tat. Incredibly, the ability to do this and the Van Gogh episode in the same location turns what might have been an indulgence into an economy measure and gives the series a more globe-trotting feel all in one. And, as mentioned under "Vincent and the Doctor", the illusion is greatly helped by not slamming the two location episodes in side-by-side.

This is, incidentally, one of those rare-for-the-new-series episodes set in the past without a celebrity (or at least "famous event" e.g. coronation and/or volcanic eruption) tacked on. I'm thinking that "Father's Day" and "The Next Doctor" would be the others, though Alex makes the point that "the Eighties" and "the Victorians" almost count as the celebrity guest on their own, and likewise "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" and "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" each evoke a World War.

Instead, Alex says "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks"; I tentatively suggest either the Empire State Building as the "celebrity" or perhaps the Depression Era as the famous event, but he's almost certainly right: that one is much more about exploring a part of history we're unfamiliar with… at least until Dalek Sec starts exploring new careers as a hat…

That sense of exploring the unknown led Alex to feel that the nearest new series equivalent – in big frocks in European history – was actually Steve Moffat's "The Girl in the Fireplace", another story with disguised invaders as well. I'd have called that one a pretty obvious "celebrity historical", but Alex is right to say that, at least in Britain, Madame de Pompadour is one of the least famous "famous people" that the series has featured. After all, she was only responsible for bankrupting the country by starting a protracted, unwinnable war and then spending vast sums of money on a lavish royal court while the economy went down the Seine. After her came a revolution involving lots of cuts. If only I could make some kind of topical political comparison.

Really, if you want the true historical experience you have to look to the "classic" series. Here, the grande dame villainess, the medieval history, the location somewhere on the continent and the appearance of William Hartnell, not to mention the touch of light genocide at the conclusion, all give the story a feel of the "The Massacre". Though course the one story it's most like, with its aliens masquerading as local superstitions, sword fights, location filming and Italianate setting, is "The Masque of Mandragora".

And sure, in a year or so, no doubt we will look back at the CGI canals and scoff, but on first viewing they look "really there" good enough.



"Vampires in a school setting" almost seems to be writer Toby Whithouse having another go at the story he wrote for Russell: "School Reunion".

So perhaps that is why "The Vampires of Venice" is the most Russell-ish entry of Steve Moffat's series so far. And perhaps that is why, in spite of its flaws (and I'm coming to those) it feels so warm and welcoming after the cold logic of Moffat's precision-engineered puzzle-boxes.

Let's just have a quick look at those Russell tropes on show:

• an animal-based alien (space-cats, space-bats, space-rhinos and space-spiders are now joined by space-fish);
• refugees fleeing from a terrible something (for "Time War" read "the silence");
• the lead villain is an empowered woman (see also the Lady Cassandra, Margaret Slitheen, Yvonne Hartman, the Empress of the Racnoss, Miss Foster, Mercy Hartigan etc);
• and the Doctor saves the days by performing some extraordinary physical stunt in order to thump the technology till it breaks do something technobabblingly-clever to the technology… till it breaks (almost more examples than you can list starting from "The End of the World", but see in particular: "The Idiot's Lantern", "Evolution of the Daleks" and "The Next Doctor" – "The Next Doctor" doubled for the applause at the end).

This does also mean we get some of the "School of Russell" plotting as well.

Two of the most egregious moments stand out: Francesco the Fish-boy's unexpectedly explosive reaction to direct sunlight; and the Doctor's over-the-top heroics (literally over the top as he scales the roof) at the conclusion.

The problem with Amy blowing up Francesco is not just because it comes out of nowhere nor the blink-and-you-missed-it "explanation" that she's using a hand-mirror to reflect the sun, but that it appears to contradict most of the rest of the story. The fishy-people are clearly photophobic, but it's not ever established that it's to the point of spontaneous combustion! They do manage to stand in direct sunlight at other points (if nothing else, Madame Rosanna's final dive into the water is achieved without blowing up the wharf) and there's no reason to think Amy's mirror is a magnifying one (in fact, we don't do a "Chekov's gun" to establish the mirror, either) so why the sudden incendiary insanity?

Meanwhile, the Doctor saving the day at the end is one of those naughty moments of "if he does something spectacular enough maybe you won't notice that all he's doing is pushing the 'plot off' button".

It's almost by-the-by that if what the Saturnynians' device does is create an earthquake that will trigger a tidal wave that will drown the city, then just putting a spanner in the works won't actually fix that – the earthquake happens, so the tsunami has been triggered, you can't un-drop the bomb. But Doctor Who is always doing that sort of thing, and at least Matt Smith acts the Doctor's reaction as "wow, that actually worked!" rather than, naming no names, "yes, mortals, you may applaud my crowning moment of awesome".

No, the problem is that bonkers spectacular villainy like this does not fit with the rest of the episode. The fact that the device exists at all is pretty much pulled out of the air; disappointingly it's not really any more than an "end-of-level challenge", just there to provide the episode with a conclusion because forty-five minutes are up.

Rosanna has been demonstrating a careful, cautious step-by-step subversion of Venice, and so far she's got five girls. And now she plans to sink the city? Why not just run away to start again somewhere else? After all, that's how this began when she and the boys escaped from Saturnyne. Rosanna's flight could have led to a chase through the watery catacombs, perhaps, with the threat of the piranha-like boys in the water at every step. Even the "she slips and falls" cliché would have made for a more original ending than what we got.

If Rosanna had expressed any weariness at the slowness and the effort of her plan, the fact she's clearly bleeding herself in order to transfuse the girls (hence all the "rehydration"), then her suddenly going nuts and pulling the doomsday lever – not to mention her suicide at the end – might make some character sense.

It also makes her last accusation at the Doctor, that he's responsible for two genocides now, a lie. Not that lying to wound is out of character. But he's in no way responsible for the extermination of the Saturnynians. Arguably they were extinct from the moment they arrived on Earth anyway, as even if Rosanna's plan had worked, the next generation would have been hybridised with humans. And at the end, at least before momma goes swimming with the fishes, their position is really only as bad as when they first arrived.

One might also ask, if mommy was so keen on repopulating her race, why was her son stomping around the place with his grumpy-face on, when he should have been pretty permanently locked in the boudoir with one or more of the buxom fish-from-space girls? And why only one son? It's not like Rosanna doesn't have perception filters to spare, as she's clearly handing them out to her "gels".

Come to think of it, why can't Rosanna's ten thousand male offspring carry on the hybridising process for themselves? It can hardly be that only the female Saturnynians are intelligent – I mean Francesco is a bit thick but…

What does actually happen to the surviving male offspring? It's just a thought, but these are not the first "water vampires" that have appeared in Doctor Who. In "The Curse of Fenric", the Ancient One is said to have passed through Venice following the path of the trader who took the flask from Constantinople. It's almost tempting to wonder if the Haemovores didn't pick up some Saturnynian traits then.


Where Toby Whithouse's first Doctor Who script fell down was that while "School Reunion" featured a strong, and much admired, emotional "b-plot" for the Doctor – meeting Sarah Jane and what this means about the way he treats companions, the effect he has when he leaves them behind – the nominal "a-plot" – all that sub-Logopolis business with batty Krillitanes trying to hack the operating system of the Universe – was treated as little more than a throwaway framing device.

If anything, "The Vampires of Venice" has the reverse problem (making it much less of a problem): the main story about the vampires is actually treated as the main story, while the emotional sub-plot about the Amy / Rory / Doctor non-love triangle is given little more than a nod in passing. Amy as good as says "let's not do this plot this week", passing the buck to Simon Nye's "Amy's Choice", and then she and Rory get on with enjoying Venice.

Actually, watched again, it's nice that you can see that Rory does get it; he's genuinely "woo Venice!"; he understands and shares Amy's excitement in time-travel in a way that, say, Mickey Smith really, really didn't.

Alex points out the comparison with "The Girl in the Fireplace" again, saying that Rory gets the advantage of actually wandering around in history, seeing all the frocks and monsters, where Mickey gets left behind on a spaceship to be probulated while the Doctor gets the girls and the frocks and gets to disparagingly compare him to a horse.

Whereas it seems clear that the Doctor likes Rory, and probably for exactly the reason that Rory shows signs of being companion material. Notice that every dig the Doctor makes seems to be accidentally (unlike the ninth or tenth Doctor's deliberate sniping). And he's going to quite a lot of trouble to make sure Rory has a happy life with Amy and it's not just for Amy's sake. We will see later ("The Pandorica Opens") that the Doctor thinks of Rory as someone he has lost, not just someone Amy loses.

These are nice character notes, so it's a shame to undermine them with silly "yours is bigger than mine" jokes. And then Francesco gets to symbolically castrate him by chopping his weapon in half in the sword fight at the end! Having Amy save Rory is empowering for her, but much less so if you've just made her boyfriend look like a dipstick.

And as for the Doctor emerging from the stripper-gram cake… as the man himself says: "there are some things that just sound better in your head…"

I'm slightly in two minds about Rory's "you make people want to impress you" speech, though. It's a good speech, a strong and true accusation to throw at the Doctor. In the excitement of the conclusion, the Doctor throws the speech back at him: you've gone from "you make people dangerous to themselves" to "we won't leave you to die" as though this doesn't entirely prove Rory's point.

But on the other hand, does Rory know the Doctor well enough yet to make that accusation?

"The Eleventh Hour" is the only other time they've really met – no, Amy's cosplay games really do not count – and while it may not strictly be an "everybody lives" (Patient Zero probably slaughters the other patients in the coma ward, and is himself executed), no one else who meets the Doctor dies. Rory and Amy only end up in peril because Patient Zero happens to have come back to the hospital; the Doctor didn't actually send them into harm's way (for once). So although the accusation is true, I'm just not sure how Rory gets there so soon.

Having said that, in the context of a story about people being turned into something they're not against their will, it's an interesting time to flag up the way that the Doctor changes the people around him too.

Ultimately, "The Vampires of Venice" appears to be a proof that Russell was right, and that feel is more important than plot. The Doctor versus vampires in Venice feels right, no matter what hand-waving over the details you need. We invest in this idea emotionally and it rewards us with a story that starts with vampires (who want to drain our blood and turn us into things like them) who turn out to be aliens who turn out to want to drain our blood and turn us into things like them, so they are vampires after all. And they're in Venice.

Which, let's face it, is pretty cool.

Then there's just a moment at the end when Venice falls silent, and it's truly chilling. All the more so in retrospect, knowing that it won't be explained and is still hanging over us.

Next Time… ♫ Cold stars shining, frozen above you… ♫ In the future Rory whispers "I love you"… ♫ Birds twitter in the sycamore tree… ♫ Dream a little dream of me… ♫ Adventures with the Doctor or Happy Ever After with Rory? That's "Amy's Choice".

Don't sing, Daddy! DO NOT SING!

[silence falls]

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Day 3477: An Education

Friday:


Poor Mr Michael Borogove! He once said he would willingly give up his seat in the Cabinet so that Mr David Laws could get a place. Looks like this might be his opportunity…

It's been a bit of a week for the schools minister, cutting this, cocking-up that, and now getting a pasting from Hard Labour's Mr Bully Balls in a rant about all those cancelled school repairs.

What no one seems to have asked, though, is WHY, after thirteen years of "Education, education, education", do we still HAVE one in five school schools in desperate need of rebuilding?

If it really MATTERED to Hard Labour… why hadn't they done it already?

Of course, the funny thing about the "Building Schools for the Future" program is that it was a scheme to rebuild every single school in the country. Every single one.

Were they really ALL about to fall down where they stood, or was there some hint that this might in fact have been an enormous VANITY PROJECT on the part of a certain senior government figure known only as the then Chancellor who wished to remain anonymous? So long as he got all the credit. And none of it went to Tony.

Mr Bully Balls says that these cuts to school rebuilding are to be recycled to fund Mr Borogove's "unfair ideological experiment", as though there's nothing "ideological" about rebuilding every school in the country whether they want it or not.

How can these cuts fall "unfairly" on Labour constituencies? Why surely only if the building programmes had been unfairly dolled out to Labour constituencies in the first place.


Look, you do have to admit that Mr Borogove's Free Schools ideas are a bit WACKY! Just at the time when his Conservatory Chum Mr Eric "In a" Pickles has been saying local authorities should save money by pooling their support services, Mr Borogove is saying that schools should GIVE UP pooling of support from their local education authority and go it alone.

Still who said ideology had to be consistent so long as local authorities are getting less power – passing it down to schools, handing it up to efficiency savings, what's the difference?

But it's hardly fair of Hard Labour to criticise him for THAT. After all, letting parents and businesses set up "Free Schools" is not that different to Lord Blairimort's City McAcademies with the Christian Fundamentalists filed off.

Nor am I completely convinced by shrill protests that parents setting up new schools will be "taking away money from existing schools". Um, yes, but they'll be taking away PUPILS as well, won't they? Wasn't that kind of the POINT of Hard Labour's own choice agenda – money follows the pupils: bad schools get fewer kids get less money. Or is Mr Balls condemning the education policy of, um, Mr Balls?

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: you can have CHOICE or you can have EFFICIENCY but you can't have BOTH. A perfectly efficient education system has exactly as many places for pupils as there are pupils. So imagine you are the last pupil to be placed: there's only going to be one place left – so you can't have a CHOICE.

Or if everyone's going to have a choice, then you have to have some spare places left over, and that's just not efficient.

And frankly, who WANTS to be perfectly efficient, anyway? Oh yes, sorry, worst recession ever blah blah blah, stick with the programme.


Hard Labour are really keen as mustard to pretend that we DON'T have to try and fix this great big hole that they've whacked through the bottom of the economy as though the cold waters of an over-extended metaphor were not already flooding in.

They want to say that the Coalition are offering a FALSE DICHOTOMY between cuts now or ruinous economic consequences.

But actually that's a FALSE false dichotomy.

For every year from 2001 onwards, come rain or shine, Mr Frown SPENT more than he RAISED in taxes. For every year, good or bad, he INCREASED the amount that we borrowed.

It's no GOOD saying: "It's not our fault, it was the bankers!" Sure, at the end, the bankers really blew the roof off, but we were on the road to ruin LOOOOOOONG before that.

(And it's not like Hard Labour policy – being "intensely relaxed" about the City getting "filthy rich" – contributed NOTHING to the whole "bet the farm on red and let her riiiiide!" attitude…)

We really DO have to do something about this, and BEFORE the election, even Hard Labour admitted it.

But now, every cut is a BAD cut, every choice is the WRONG choice. The escalating whines of "we wouldn't have done it like that" are only exceeded by the deafening silence about what they WOULD have done instead.

Hard Labour did actually LOSE the election and it would show a little GRACE if they would just accept that people chose austerity NOW rather than running up more DEBTS for LATER.

Instead, this refusal to accept that Hard Labour's policies have been REJECTED by the voters is making them sound like SPOILED BABIES.

Worse, when voters vote "YES" to "time for a change", it means "leave it the way it was" is really NOT a credible alternative. Which means that Hard Labour haven't actually GOT any policies at all.

At least not beyond spitting "TRAITOR!!!!" at the Liberal Democrats in a way that confirms everyone's suspicions about why we SHOULDN'T have had a coalition with selfish deluded THEM!

Mr Balls may THINK that brazenly honking about how "Mr Borogove will DECIMATE the education service" SOUNDS good, but it just doesn't make SENSE!

"Decimate" means "reduce by one tenth" (yes, I've seen "Last of the Time Lords"), and that's merely the LEAST of Mr Borogove's options.

Hang on, I'm not helping…


I think it would be a good idea to lower the rhetoric on BOTH sides a bit.

If the Coalition could maybe agree to STOP saying how Labour "spent all the money" and "there's none left" every five minutes, perhaps Labour could agree that they will stop saying that every SINGLE thing the Coalition does is BOUND to cause a double-dip recession and sixty-million people in perpetual unemployment.

Not least because what's the POINT?

I'm sure it makes THEM feel a lot better about being such BAD LOSERS, but it won't benefit them at the election in five years: if they're right they'll win anyway, and no amount of "we told you so" will make them look anything other than SMUG about the misery of people they're supposed to represent; if they're wrong, they'll no doubt deny everything anyway. And in the meantime, all they're doing is spreading fear and misery.

So let's all just drop it.

Then Labour could go away and have their leadership contest and actually decide some POLICIES; and the Coalition can have some time to see if the policies THEY are trying are any good or not.

And then we might ALL learn something.

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