The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Strengthenising Britishness, Hospitalising Schoolery

The Glorious Successor has made his first NuLab conflab speech as prime minister, promising "a new direction" on health, education and crime.

Gosh. Another one.

On health: "my aim for the next stage of an NHS personal to you: for every adult a regular checkup on the NHS", harking back to the verbless touchy-feeliness of New Labour's glory days, when majorities were huge and men were Mandelsons. Also, "every suspected breast cancer case will be treated as urgent and colon cancer screening will be extended to people in their 70s". Who's going to do all the extra work? A bit more reorganisation of rotas may soon be necessary, I fancy; unless the NHS is to be used merely as a means of locating problems and then pointing people to the appropriate department of Big Pharma. But Gordon, fresh from the chancellorship of a New Labour government, cannot have had that in mind.

On education, "the prime minister also promised a more personalised service". He and his tent-mates have decided "that one-to-one tuition will be there in our schools... for 300,000 children in English and 300,000 in maths" and, dropping the verbs again, "for every secondary pupil a personal tutor throughout their school years - and starting with 600,000 pupils, small group tuition"; in this case, thanks to the Minister for Clapped-Out Human Resources, Ivan Lewis, we do have some idea where the staff are going to come from. Gordon also thinks it's time for a Ten-Year Plan to "make our schools, colleges and universities world class", despite ten previous years of education, education, education under Tony, whom Gordon admires deeply. Having world-class schools, colleges and universities will "make the biggest change in education in decades".

Gosh. Another one.

The police state will also be personalised: "we will provide handheld computers - 1,000 now, by next year 10,000 right across the country - cutting paper work so that officers can log crimes on the spot, stay on the beat and not waste time returning to the station to fill out forms". Perhaps the officers will be given personal tutors so they don't make too many typing errors and consign some misspelled unfortunate to prison or deportation.

Then again, perhaps they won't.

On New Labour's favourite theme of cutting back democracy, Gordon said that the executive would be made more accountable, and then offered the bizarre non sequitur, "That's why parliament will make the final decisions about peace and war". I can imagine the party whips ordering MPs to hold the executive accountable, particularly in matters of peace and war; but it is a little difficult to imagine the executive being held that way for very long, particularly by the shabby crowd of job-seekers and invertebrates which occupies much of the House of Commons.

Gordon also "pledged to strengthen people's liberties, to uphold the freedom of speech, freedom of information and freedom to protest". It is not yet clear whether by "uphold" he meant leave alone, which is the only way in which any liberty can possibly be "strengthened" or "upheld" by a government; or restrict and remove, which is what Tony would have meant by it. Gordon also pledged to "stand up for our schools and hospitals", such as they are; to "stand up for British values" (God, Trident, America-is-our-greatest-ally); to "stand up for a strong Britain" (Trident, America-is-our-greatest-ally, war) - and not to let us down, which is jolly nice of him.

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