The nerve of the man...

"I don't think we should invent differences where none exist". DC

David Cameron, "Whether you're Labour, Conservative, or Liberal Democrat, you're motivated by... progressive aims... a country... where opportunity is more equal".

Progressive, the Tories?
* "Tory tax plans put child benefit at risk" The Independent
* "Raise the inheritance tax threshold from £700k to £1m" The Guardian
* "Scrapping vehicle excise duty on the least environmentally friendly cars" The Times
* "Tories reassure independent schools about their charitable status" The Independent
* "Tory marriage tax allowance would give the highest earners 13 times as much as those on lower incomes"

Oh yes and they want to bring back fox-hunting with dogs.
Of course that's what the country has been crying out for.
In the depths of the deepest recession in living memory, and top of the list of things the Tories want to do is have a free vote on fox hunting.
On the doorsteps throughout Keighley, Ilkley, Silsden, and elsewhere in the constituency, that's what people buttonhole me about. A free vote on fox hunting with dogs.

At the risk of sounding sarcastic, you've obviously got your finger on the political pulse of the nation, David.
The Tories are not progressive, never were and will never be.

Don't be fooled by the smooth(ish) banter.

The Thatcher era, three decades on

Hard to believe that it was 30 years ago today that the British electorate voted Margaret Thatcher in as the nation's first woman prime minister.
What a catastrophe she was, for the economy, for society, for Britain as a whole.
* Inflation doubled within a year and remained at an average of 8% throughout her “reign”.
* Indirect taxes (which disproportionately affect those on lower incomes) nearly doubled, VAT rose from 8% to 15%.
* Interest rates shot up, to more than 17%.
* Unemployment rocketed from 1.4m in 1979 to 3.5m by 1982, or one in eight people out of work, higher than anytime since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
* Long-term unemployment blighted an entire generation in Northern Ireland, Scotland, South Wales, the North East, and the North West, and of course huge swathes of Yorkshire.
* Industry declined in the North and the Midlands (remember coal, steel, ship-building); although there were new sectors like financial services in the South.

What prosperity Mrs Thatcher brought was selective and temporary.
She left Britain in recession, with unemployment, inflation, and interest rates rising.

Mrs Thatcher said there was “no such thing as society”, and made the perverse observation that the only reason the Good Samaritan did any good was “because he had money”.

Above all, not only was she bad for Britain when she was PM, she continues to be bad for the country today. The causes of the present slump, unrestricted credit, deregulation, and too much financial speculation, all date back to the 1980s. No successive government dared reverse these decisions: a curse we all now share.

To paraphrase Auden's description of the 1930s, Mrs Thatcher's time in office was a, "low, dishonest decade."