Morning:
8°c
There comes a point in a government's life when it simply runs out of ideas. Just runs out of them.
It's been looking after the shop for so long that it has exhausted every previously-dismissed half-thought it ever had in its desperation to look dynamic and focused.
At that point there are two ways to go: they could admit it, hand over the keys of Whitehall to the other lot with dignity and grace, explaining as they do so which days the bins get taken and the knack to opening that tricky window in the Foreign Office.
Or they could carry on announcing the first things that come into their heads in the thin hope that the relentless terror and sleeplessness associated with executive power, in combination with that little sense of approaching deadline you get out of a stomach ulcer, might at some point turn them into a genius. Inevitably, they go the second way.
Take this week, for example. We have the pre-announcement of a consultation document (how's that for stamped with authority and certitude?) concerning the tricky business of citizenship.
For a start, citizenship is not an area you want to be wandering into as a politician unless it is as the culmination of some elaborate bet which was the reason you got into politics in the first place.
Citizenship, to use the kind of terminology I generally associate with the BBC's Nick Robinson, is a hot potato tossed into the jaws of the lion standing in a minefield at the top of a very slippery slope.
The ideas in the document certainly appear to be the work of touchingly tired people. There's the notion that in future applicants for British citizenship will have to spend five years as a “probationary citizen”.
It's not clear what this means. Perhaps they will only be able to practice for full citizenship in the presence of an already licensed citizen and they won't be allowed on motorways.
Under these proposals applicants will need to earn enough points to qualify for citizenship. What happens to the ones who don't make it? Maybe the four highest losers go through to the second round anyway, like on University Challenge.
There are ways they can increase their scores. These magnificently include the proposal that wannabe citizens can gain extra credit by becoming members of political parties. Given the rate at which people who are already citizens of this country are turning in their party cards, this raises the prospect of a country whose political classes are entirely drawn from first-generation migrants.
Oh, please let that happen. Because I've always suspected that one day the Daily Mail will finally start using swearwords for headlines. I'd love to see that. I reckon this could do it. Candidates can also gain points by heading to Scotland which, according to the document, is “in need of further immigration”. Wow. That's harsh.
You might as well just say: “Nice first attempt at a population, Scotland, but we just don't think you've quite cracked it. Your people could do with going through another couple of drafts.” This government has nine months to run. By February they'll be putting policy documents together on the basis of what people text in to The Wright Stuff.
Gordon Brown heads to Scotland
So Gordon is off to do a week's community work in Scotland. An excellent and commendable notion, no doubt, though it's difficult to say which aspect of it will be of most benefit — the community work or the fact that he won't be running the country for a week.
Let the Queen be streetwise
The Met constable paid more than £100,000 last year was some sort of protection officer, it seems, billeted to a figure of national importance like the Queen or Fern Britton.
We are naturally up in arms about trained personnel undertaking demanding jobs in niche areas being paid more than 67p above the minimum wage. To prevent future outrages, I say the Queen and her lot must fend for themselves.
I like the idea of Big Liz on walkabout going into a karate stance every time there's a noise. If she's a bit creaky for that, who has more suits of armour than her? It'd be nice to see a monarch in one of those again.
Thank heavens for useless bankers ...
I've had enough of people blithering on about the huge bonuses awarded to City executives. They seem incapable of recognising that these bonuses are deserved and a good thing.
Think how much bigger they would have been had the roaring poltroons done their jobs properly instead of approaching the business of work with that “what-does-this-button-do?-no-idea-let's-just-press-it-anyway-OK-now-how-about-a-bottle-of-Veuve-Cliquot” attitude they cultivated.
Presumably there would barely be enough money in the global economy to pay out bonuses won in such an event. You can bet your bottom dollar (which, sadly, in the current economic climate, may also be your top dollar) that they would have taken them anyway, even if they'd had to do so in kind (in lieu of what they were owed a couple of Lamborghinis, say, or Ghana).
Such a leeching of means and wherewithal would inevitably have brought capitalism to its well-padded knees. Mercifully, those City executives have avoided this by earning bonuses which only run into billions, thanks to their failure to identify their fiscal arse from their financial elbow and the bringing of capitalism to its well-padded ... oh. I see.
