It's important to continue to be wry as you watch the TV coverage of the latest change of direction announced by Mr Cameron it's good to be able to smile at the contradictions and the Alice in Wonderland strategy of making words mean just what you want them to mean.
Apparently we are not going to offer cut price sentencing and 'one for two' offers to people who plead guilty, apparently it doesn't play well in Tory constituencies where hanging and flogging is still the punishment de jour and the stocks are maintained and occasionally witches ducked in the duck pond.
Sad really because the proposals now rejected by Mr Cameron were one of the better ideas the coalition has had.
But public campaigns can be effective, the forests have not been sold and now a Bishop is chairing the review, if you go down to the woods today beware because today is the day the Bishop's are having a picnic!
No doubt all dressed in Sherwood Purple.
Then the changes to the NHS have been changed, although so far it seems, not changed for the better, just changed more slowly, on the grounds that people might not notice until they turn up at the hospital, find that the A&E has ben closed and they are asked for their credit card before they can be seen by a Doctor.
This week we were offered a dental check up in 2012 a year ahead instead of the usual six months, apparently it's at the dentist's discretion?
Call me cynical but it smacked of saving money ..............
But now another Bishop, an Archbishop nevertheless, has stepped into the fray with an article in The New Statesman questioning the political legitimacy of the coalition's political programme.
So the specious claims of the con-dems, who could be said to be in power but not in authority, have been challenged.
Wry looks at the big society are, it seems, a thing of the past.
Of course Archbishop's having opinions is not new and anyone with any sense, including Mr Milliband will welcome this intervention, the opposition has seemed a bit quiet recently it's probably just as well that someone has a go. So the Church of England has gone from being the Tory Party at prayer to Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition! After all when people cannot defend themselves, occasionally it is good for the defence to come from outwith the political and from within, the moral sphere.
Apparently, according to the Archbishop, the 'Big Society' is a 'painfully stale slogan' and not stopping there the Archbishop rounds on Michael Gove and Ian Duncan Smith, hooray I say, for an Archbishop who has suddenly woken up and smelt the coffee.
I find it amazing that as a nation we have sat back and accepted the policies that have so far, reduced standards of living, cut defence budgets, thrown education into turmoil, forced the NHS into another unnecessary review and reintroduced the idea of the 'deserving and undeserving' poor, without a murmer.
Sharp changes in direction in policies to bring radical changes, changes which were not in the manifesto's on which either the Tories or the Liberals fought the election, have begun a process that feels remarkably like a form of 'back to the future' soon living standards and opportunities will feel like the 50's, with university reserved for the rich, meat reserved for Sundays and clothes replaced once a year for the Whitsun Walks.
Even now the charity shops are finding it hard to get new stock and the bargains have all but disappeared.
Soon we will be hoping for a new Buddy Holly to emerge singing 'That'll be the Day'.
And then it will be the Sixties all over again and that WILL be nice and it will be Mr Milliband celebrating the white heat of the technological revolution instead of that nice Mr Wilson ..........
Apparently we are not going to offer cut price sentencing and 'one for two' offers to people who plead guilty, apparently it doesn't play well in Tory constituencies where hanging and flogging is still the punishment de jour and the stocks are maintained and occasionally witches ducked in the duck pond.
Sad really because the proposals now rejected by Mr Cameron were one of the better ideas the coalition has had.
But public campaigns can be effective, the forests have not been sold and now a Bishop is chairing the review, if you go down to the woods today beware because today is the day the Bishop's are having a picnic!
No doubt all dressed in Sherwood Purple.
Then the changes to the NHS have been changed, although so far it seems, not changed for the better, just changed more slowly, on the grounds that people might not notice until they turn up at the hospital, find that the A&E has ben closed and they are asked for their credit card before they can be seen by a Doctor.
This week we were offered a dental check up in 2012 a year ahead instead of the usual six months, apparently it's at the dentist's discretion?
Call me cynical but it smacked of saving money ..............
But now another Bishop, an Archbishop nevertheless, has stepped into the fray with an article in The New Statesman questioning the political legitimacy of the coalition's political programme.
So the specious claims of the con-dems, who could be said to be in power but not in authority, have been challenged.
Wry looks at the big society are, it seems, a thing of the past.
Of course Archbishop's having opinions is not new and anyone with any sense, including Mr Milliband will welcome this intervention, the opposition has seemed a bit quiet recently it's probably just as well that someone has a go. So the Church of England has gone from being the Tory Party at prayer to Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition! After all when people cannot defend themselves, occasionally it is good for the defence to come from outwith the political and from within, the moral sphere.
Apparently, according to the Archbishop, the 'Big Society' is a 'painfully stale slogan' and not stopping there the Archbishop rounds on Michael Gove and Ian Duncan Smith, hooray I say, for an Archbishop who has suddenly woken up and smelt the coffee.
I find it amazing that as a nation we have sat back and accepted the policies that have so far, reduced standards of living, cut defence budgets, thrown education into turmoil, forced the NHS into another unnecessary review and reintroduced the idea of the 'deserving and undeserving' poor, without a murmer.
Sharp changes in direction in policies to bring radical changes, changes which were not in the manifesto's on which either the Tories or the Liberals fought the election, have begun a process that feels remarkably like a form of 'back to the future' soon living standards and opportunities will feel like the 50's, with university reserved for the rich, meat reserved for Sundays and clothes replaced once a year for the Whitsun Walks.
Even now the charity shops are finding it hard to get new stock and the bargains have all but disappeared.
Soon we will be hoping for a new Buddy Holly to emerge singing 'That'll be the Day'.
And then it will be the Sixties all over again and that WILL be nice and it will be Mr Milliband celebrating the white heat of the technological revolution instead of that nice Mr Wilson ..........
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