Can Snare for the Common Man
Monday, October 31, 2005

Back in August I lamented that, what with suicide bombers and police death squads on the streets of Britain, "the silly season failed to reveal its full jocular aspect this year". In fact, thanks to New Labour and it's free-form jazz approach to policy announcement ("Hmmmmm, ok you cats, this next little improv number is from anti-social behaviour tsar Louise Casey. Yeah, hit me daddio, eight to the bar."), it merely arrived freakishly late with the last balmy blazes of October sun.

The Queen in Alice in Wonderland boasted that she'd sometimes "believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast". These days, the expectations of our imaginations are less rigorous and most of us are merely able to debunk six New Labour policy initiatives while waiting for the Coco Pops to turn the milk brown.

Do we have a reckless endangerment law in the UK? If these ideas get onto the statute book some people are going to have some very public things to say about Government policy. Like the first barman to be glassed after asking a customer, fuelled by a few extra hours of licensing law's Stella Artois, to put his cigarette out. Or the first bus driver kicked to a gristly puddle by the gang of Gary Lagers whose cans he just tried to confiscate. Or are the bus and train companies going to be expected to put a bouncer on every route and the clubs one behind every bar?

West Street in Brighton town centre (for example) on a Saturday night already resembles Escape From New York (except without the social niceties). At this rate of policy-making, it won't be long before minicab drivers will be allowed to shoot to kill - "He had what looked like a bottle of Budweiser in his hand. I had no choice but to take him out. Eight times."

Of course, a "blanket ban" on drinking on public transport will be nuanced much like the smoking ban was. The proles in the cattle trucks will have to do with weak tea to see them through the horror that is modern standard rail travel. Those in First Class will still be allowed their champers as they bullet to Brussels. It's an inverse proposition to the smoking ban - cancer is fine for the great unwashed (John Reid for example has no qualms about the 21-year-old mother living on a sink estate or his heartand constituency in the working men's clubs smoking themselves and others to death) but a drink on a train is a pleasure (nay, a desperate necessity) that must be denied those of us in the cheap seats.

(I'm all for banning grog on buses. If you can't go the length of a bus journey without a can in your hand you need to seek help.)

It's politics by laughometer. If a policy floated in the media fails to get a laugh, it's in. A policy that gets a raucous roar like the proposed drinking ban did yesterday goes on the fire along with frog-marching drunks to cashpoints, Hazel Blears' Guantanamo boiler suits for those doing community service and her idea for a caste system. Some of these ideas have lifespans that make your average mayfly look like Methuselah.

I hope a pedometer for every schoolchild (as promised during the General Election campaign to make our kids healthy) hasn't been laughed out. I still wait (Waiting for Pedo) with anticipation for my daughter to come striding home from school, her pedometer counting how close she is to attaining Nirvana.

I am worried however that the pedometers will also be electronic tags transmitting the number of steps each child takes, and to where, to a central database. The government might then propose to remove benefits, council housing, cheap lager or whatever from those parents whose children aren't getting enough fresh air. The equivalent of at least three trips to the shop to buy Mum's Rothmans will be the government recommendation.

Anyway. Is this how New Labour dies? Of shame, laughter ringing in its ears? I can't remember a single policy idea put out by this government since the General Election that hasn't been hung, drawn and quartered by pretty much everybody with an opinion. City academies get another kicking this morning, the plans to contract out health service provision to the private sector is under legal challenge, reforms of mental health laws are "unworkable", both ID card and anti-terror legislations are about to take a kicking, the Racial Hatred Bill took a kicking, and David Blunkett (of all people) is reportedly wobbling over forcing the sick and disabled back to work.

All this thinking out loud in the newspapers and half-arsed legislation gives the impression less of power with purpose and more of a fug of pot-addled students fantasising about starting a band when none of them own instruments or have any musical ability.

I, for one, can't wait to see what's next. My money's on bed by eight with only one story for those on incomes under £20,000 a year.


2 Comments:

On October 31, 2005 3:40 PM, Blogger Oscar Wildebeest said...

Anyone care to open a book on precisely when New Labour ran out of ideas? (Apart from the idea of how to make Labour electable, of course.)

I'm wondering if it pre-dates 1992 at all...

(PS the word verification for this comment is "vbckued", which is precisely what we'll all be by the time the next election comes round.)  


On October 31, 2005 5:56 PM, Blogger Scribe said...

How New Labour dies? Or how the political system in general manages to run itself out of a job, and so spends its daytime-tv-watching hours coming up with ever-more ludicrosity to maintain precious column inches?

Each bizarro bill introduced to the house, and each Blunkett boob (not in the literal sense - yet) is another half a dozen headlines taken away from *real* issues. And no publicity is bad publicity...

I'm also waiting for the plan to combine taxi companies with private ambulance services. Either that or build a hospital once they demolish the Brighton Centre, for ease of access...  


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