Poor dears! There they are, spreading the pain evenly across the whole country, (not counting Gideon’s 4 million quid offshore nest egg) and those nasty working class people refuse to cheer them on while they do it. And being unkind to that sensitive little flower Philip Hammond* too, while he’s only trying to explain how we’re all in it together.
* Philip Hammond MP has a personal fortune estimated to be between £7.5 million and £9 million, And he has three children so will be making the considerable sacrifice of losing his child benefit… Just so you know that he’s sharing your pain.
I picked up on thi
s from Tim Worstall the other day… Shocking news about the Rolling Stones! in which Tim expresses mock surprise that a bunch of middle-class white kids were not exactly rock revolutionaries.
Well, I’ll overlook Tim’s suggestion that the Stones’ first album was nothing but note for note covers of blues standards (other than to point out that a quarter of the tracks were written by the Rolling Stones). But I do think Mick, Keef and the boys deserve a little more credit than this sneering piece actually gives them. I acknowledge that young Timmy was still sucking on his mother’s teet when Richmond’s finest were cutting their first album so he may be unable to appreciate the full context, but way back in the day the music the Stones put on the first album was a good deal more adventurous than may appear nearly 50 years later.
If you glance back at the Charts for 1963 when the Rolling Stones’ first single was released you find the likes of Presley, Adam Faith, Richard Chamberlain (Dr. Kildare), Tony Bennett and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. A bunch of middle-class white kids got a Chuck Berry song in to the charts. The album Tim mocks introduced British kids to the great Jimmy Reed, Willie Dixon and Rufus Thomas. Keef and Brian Jones may well have been guilty of pinching riffs from these great bluesmen, but hey, there’s not much new under the sun. Listen to the blues singers of the post war period and you find Leadbelly, Son House and Charlie Patton.
Much of the credit for the British blues boom in the 1960′s must be attributed to the direct influence of the Rolling Stones early albums. Other British artists had been faithfully reproducing the music of black Chicago and the Mississippi delta for years before the Stones came on the scene (Alexis Korner, Cyril Davies) without making the breakthrough. But the likes of Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Hooker and co. appreciated what the Stones did and gave them credit for it… even if years later some are reluctant to acknowledge it.
Luke Akehurst on one of the more miserable of George Osborne’s cuts.
I suppose that’s one of those little victories the Liberal Democrats claim to have won. You defer a decision on Trident and we’ll let you cut benefits from disabled folk in care homes.
My favourite Liberal Democrat MP, (its not a long list) the demur and publicity shy Yardley MP John Hemming, has been experiencing a slight problem with his little Beauty.
Please, none of the obvious pussy jokes if you don’t mind.
From the genius of Beau B’Do (via his Twitter feed)
Johann Hari in good form in The Indy: A colder, crueller country – for no gain:
It can’t be coincidental that this is being done to us by three men – Cameron, Osborne, and Nick Clegg – who have never worried about a bill in their lives. On a basic level, they do not understand the effects of these decisions on real people. Remember, Cameron said before the election: “The papers keep writing that [my wife, Samantha] comes from a very blue-blooded background”, but “she is actually very unconventional. She went to a day school.” Osborne is a beneficiary of a £4m trust fund he did nothing whatsoever to earn and which is stashed offshore to avoid tax. Clegg actually thought the state pension was £30 a week, a level that would kill pensioners.
There is one stark symbol of how unjust the response to this economic disaster caused by bankers is. They have just paid themselves £7bn in bonuses – much of it our money – to reward themselves for failure. That’s the same sum Osborne took from the benefits of the British poor yesterday, who did nothing to cause this crash. And he has the chutzpah to brag about “fairness.”
Mark Steel on Uncle Vince’s lies…
Wayne Rooney must look in the papers every morning and think, “How does Vince Cable get away with it? Just like me, a year ago he was a national hero, the embodiment of hope, and now he’s a bumbling fool and revealed as a cheat. But he’s allowed to carry on as he pleases and isn’t even substituted. I want a transfer to the Liberal Democrats.”
For example, Cable campaigned for election on a promise to abolish university fees, even signing a pledge to prove his commitment, and interpreted that pledge by doubling the fees.
It’s especially unsettling that such blatant lying came from Cable because he looked like a sweet old uncle, but it turns out he combines the demeanour of Mr Kipling with the economic ideals of Norman Tebbit. So every time he makes a statement he should be introduced with a cuddly slow deep voice saying, “Mr Cable wanted to be in the Government. So he set about doing all the things he’d said would be disastrous a few weeks ago. Because Mr Cable is an exceedingly power-hungry unprincipled little snake.”
On the day we are to be told by the Bullingdon Boys that we are “all in this together” as they prepare to sack half a million people in the public sector… the newspapers are obsessing over some scruffy little scouse millionaire who wants to be paid a quarter of a million quid a week.
I don’t know who to feel more sorry for. Those Manchester United fans who thought they were special and fell for the ‘badge kissing‘ act… or the Liberal Democrats who convinced themselves that they were applying the brakes to the Tory cuts.
They are both delusional.
George Monbiot in his best whinging mood tells us that the Conservatives are cutting out of ideological commitment rather than economic necessity. Regular readers of comrade Monbiot’s articles may remember his advice to the electorate before the last General Election. In February he wrote:
I understand the hazards of voting for the smaller parties and allowing the right-hand glove puppet to replace the left-hand glove puppet. I know that the Tories are even worse than this government. But by voting for the candidates on the list compiled by the democracy campaign Hang ‘em, not all of whom are Liberal Democrats but all of whom are reformers with a good chance of taking or keeping seats, we can break this rotten system while remaining true to our beliefs.
So, let’s just have a look to see who George’s mates at Hang ‘em advised us to vote for in, say, Sheffield Hallam.
Thanks George!
Whilst Cameron and co. are delighted to wrap themselves in the shroud of Margaret Thatcher, I suspect Norman Tebbit will probably not be near the top of the Tory leadership’s Christmas Card list.
Here, Tebbit rips William Hague a new orifice for his weasel words over Europe. I have long maintained on this blog that those Conservatives who thought Cameron’s Government, even if they hadn’t had to cuddle up to the Liberals, were going to be anti-Eu were flying in the face of history and deluding themselves. All of the major moves towards European integration have been by the Tories. The decision to enter the Common Market, the signing of the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty… all measures taken by Conservative Governments.
Leopards don’t change their spots.
