Back in time for the rain.
At least we weren't planning a parade!
There is at least a freshness to the air!
As the running joke went during our stay in Genoa: humidity is not a virtue!
The big society which is, on the face of it at least, the underlying theme of this blog appears like the Monty Python parrot to be pretty much deceased.
I loved the photograph in The Times of Mr and Mrs Cameron in front of a fishmongers stall in Portugal on their recent holiday, they appeared to be making a speech although, judging by the glassy eyed stare of the fish, they may well have been rehearsing their speech for the Tory Party Conference.
Certainly the coalition appears to be pretty light on humidity, as increasingly mean spirited policies are rolled out almost on a daily basis to accompanying cheers from the Tory Party and the sound of ice rattling in the gin and tonic glasses.
From the poster vans circulating in parts of London inviting illegal immigrants to go home, to the bed room tax and the weeks delay in benefit payments alongside the 1% cap on increases in benefits each new announcement seeks to tie in support from the Tory Heartlands.
Politicians enjoy power and at a certain point in the lifetime of any parliament on any particular parties watch the agenda shifts from policies designed to benefit the economy and increase the sense of public well being, to simply ensuring that the Party in power is re-elected.
It is a bit more complex in a coalition because the party with the largest number of seats has to ensure that it distances itself from both the opposition and the party with whom it is sharing power.
It may not be as brazen as Robert Mugabe's tricks, printing a few hundred thousand extra voting forms, adding a few extra names to the electoral roll, making life difficult for supporters of the opposition to actually vote, but tricks are inevitably employed.
Labour is being systematically discredited as the party of welfare or in the gift of the Unions and whilst the smear campaign appears to be working, at least to the satisfaction of the lobbyist's, the real problem, Tory supporters switching allegiance to UKIP, means that they are currently being wooed back by a series of campaigns aimed at welfare dependency and immigrants.
Occasionally there is a sense of some disagreement emerging as the Liberal partners in the coalition try to distance themselves from the mean spirited rhetoric of messrs Cameron, Osborne and Duncan Smith.
The election, set for 2015 seems to have started already, it may well be that it will begin in earnest with this round of party conferences but we are it seems set for a long, drawn out and probably fairly disagreeable campaign running into 2015.
Add into the febrile mix, social networking: facebook, twitter etc which were so effectively used by the Obama campaign team and we might see a whole new style of not so much big society but bigging up campaigns exhorting us to vote for this party or that.
The campaign buses are even now being coach painted, the soap boxes prepared and soon the summer of heatwave and thunder will give way to a winter of extravagant claims, undeliverable promises and subtle and not so subtle attacks on sections of our society who don't want to vote for food banks, more children in poverty and attacks on their fellow citizens, but who prefer the large and spiritual ideas which underpin a society in which all strive to fulfil their human potential and are supported by the elected government to ensure that they will.
At least we weren't planning a parade!
There is at least a freshness to the air!
As the running joke went during our stay in Genoa: humidity is not a virtue!
The big society which is, on the face of it at least, the underlying theme of this blog appears like the Monty Python parrot to be pretty much deceased.
I loved the photograph in The Times of Mr and Mrs Cameron in front of a fishmongers stall in Portugal on their recent holiday, they appeared to be making a speech although, judging by the glassy eyed stare of the fish, they may well have been rehearsing their speech for the Tory Party Conference.
Certainly the coalition appears to be pretty light on humidity, as increasingly mean spirited policies are rolled out almost on a daily basis to accompanying cheers from the Tory Party and the sound of ice rattling in the gin and tonic glasses.
From the poster vans circulating in parts of London inviting illegal immigrants to go home, to the bed room tax and the weeks delay in benefit payments alongside the 1% cap on increases in benefits each new announcement seeks to tie in support from the Tory Heartlands.
Politicians enjoy power and at a certain point in the lifetime of any parliament on any particular parties watch the agenda shifts from policies designed to benefit the economy and increase the sense of public well being, to simply ensuring that the Party in power is re-elected.
It is a bit more complex in a coalition because the party with the largest number of seats has to ensure that it distances itself from both the opposition and the party with whom it is sharing power.
It may not be as brazen as Robert Mugabe's tricks, printing a few hundred thousand extra voting forms, adding a few extra names to the electoral roll, making life difficult for supporters of the opposition to actually vote, but tricks are inevitably employed.
Labour is being systematically discredited as the party of welfare or in the gift of the Unions and whilst the smear campaign appears to be working, at least to the satisfaction of the lobbyist's, the real problem, Tory supporters switching allegiance to UKIP, means that they are currently being wooed back by a series of campaigns aimed at welfare dependency and immigrants.
Occasionally there is a sense of some disagreement emerging as the Liberal partners in the coalition try to distance themselves from the mean spirited rhetoric of messrs Cameron, Osborne and Duncan Smith.
The election, set for 2015 seems to have started already, it may well be that it will begin in earnest with this round of party conferences but we are it seems set for a long, drawn out and probably fairly disagreeable campaign running into 2015.
Add into the febrile mix, social networking: facebook, twitter etc which were so effectively used by the Obama campaign team and we might see a whole new style of not so much big society but bigging up campaigns exhorting us to vote for this party or that.
The campaign buses are even now being coach painted, the soap boxes prepared and soon the summer of heatwave and thunder will give way to a winter of extravagant claims, undeliverable promises and subtle and not so subtle attacks on sections of our society who don't want to vote for food banks, more children in poverty and attacks on their fellow citizens, but who prefer the large and spiritual ideas which underpin a society in which all strive to fulfil their human potential and are supported by the elected government to ensure that they will.
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