Much as I think it to be the most overused phrase of the 21st century to date, I increasingly appreciate why ‘The Elephant in the Room’ has caught on. No generation in history has managed to blather on for hours about, say, lack of space without discussing the planet’s largest land mammal taking a dump in the corner. Sometimes (as with Waspi) this merely reflects the arrogance of the political class. At others (for example, Calais migrants) it suggests to the objective observer that the denialist is mad. I’d write ‘stark staring mad’, but clearly staring starkly at something doesn’t seem to help these unfortunate souls.
Arrogance is what powers the press office at the DWP….that and the free hand they’ve been given since Cameron abolished the Central Office of Information. The COI was, among other things, a watchdog to stop cheating MPs from nudging Party praise quietly into Government ads.
While it’s true that most of the COI staff were failed ad agency people ticking boxes prior to a cushy retirement, the message below wouldn’t have been allowed under any circumstances.
Christine Taylor’s biting riposte is hugely deserved, but the message is blatantly political: and the DWP spinners should not be spending taxpayers’ money promoting a view that 75% of the electorate don’t share. “But that’s the Tories, you see,” as Big Benn would’ve said, “take you money away with one hand, use it to bamboozle you with the other”.
I wouldn’t mind quite so much if the DWP’s policy on State Pension reform was either (a) reasoned and/or (b) working. But the truth is it’s a kack-handed mumbo-jumble of ‘savings’ that both over-supplied a shrinking job market, and were very badly communicated to the poor devils on the receiving end of it. Also – a mere technicality, but what the hell – as the Waspis had already paid in huge amounts on National Insurance, it is embezzlement.
The number of socio-economic factors not taken into account is, when one examines the ‘policy’, staggering in its sloppy stupidity. But some of it is just sheer uncaring illogic. Dr Janaway above points out crisply why the road to equanimity can only be taken by applying the changes to these being born right now.
But that of course would be ‘far too late’ and thus (as the so-called pension experts insist) ‘impractical’. You see, we need the money now. And whose fault is that, we ask.
Governmentally incompetent MPs aside, you have to wonder about whether there is any specialist expertise anywhere in the Civil Service. No account was taken, for example, of the rising divorce rate among over 50s. Equally (it is now emerging) nobody thought about what to do when lawyers start to tell campaigners, “Actually, the Government hasn’t got a leg to stand on”.
Meanwhile, back on the ninth moon of Planet Tonto the debate continues to rage about whether the correct term to use for a bearded bloke in a hoodie is ‘adult’ or ‘child’. The response of the lady below to David Davis’s observation made the hairs on my neck prickle.
What you see above is a human being dehumanised by stereotypical pc claptrap, and thus no longer able to think beyond her imprisoned brain.
Anyway, some of the shots having been taken by the Daily Mail, Patrick Dalton – or, as he prefers to be known, @shitlondon – decided to strike a blow for Bedlam by saying how the Mail likes girls whose looks belie their tender years.
There are one or two small inconsistencies in his argument. The Mail shots all have girls in them, whereas the Calais shots all have males in them. And whereas the girls are made up to look older, the blokes from Calais aren’t – they just are older.
Still, I suppose this is what passes for satire now: “somebody’s threatening my belief system – quick, find me a cliché to distract them”.
Whether the folks with rings through the nose like it or not, figures released later by the Home Office confirmed that, for most of us, the spherical seeing systems either side of our nasal inhalation orifice are correct: over 65% of all migrants trying to enter the UK as ‘children’ prove to be over 18 when the claimed age is challenged.
EU Observer is rapidly consolidating its position as the Number One Daft EU Propaganda Site, or NODEPS for short. Certainly, there is no depth at all to 100% of what it puts out – and yet eerily, at the same time, no depths to which it won’t sink in order to offer an altered reality.
So while it isn’t yet at the stage of seeing geriatrics and registering new born babies, EUObs has just put this Happy Families masterpiece of non-news up:
Yes, amateur watercolourist Razor Mayflower will be showing her latest sketches to her fellow EU Summit leaders but without much details. She is expected also to be without much credibilities as she will be without much answers, but these are early days. Not as much early as they were 118 days ago when the UK voted to leave the EU, since when not much happenings have, as it were, happened. But an outline is better than nothing.
Yesterday at The Slog: More on those giant Calais children
The Slog 