Monday 12 + Tuesday 13 April - Brandon's Birthday, Terra Cotta, Man at Arms, More Election, not necessarily coherent, Thoughts**

Nat's off out tonight, how fast they grow up, into town to have dinner at the Terra Cotta  Chinese restaurant

to celebrate Brandon’s (12th?) birthday. Tomorrow, they’re off to see Clash of the Titans in 3D. The Terra Cotta’s a quite nice, all you can eat, restaurant that I’ve also been too a few times before. Fortunately, Nat’s been there before too and, additionally, has eaten out, when we’ve been on holiday, since he was tiny so hopefully he won’t shame himself in front of Brandon’s Dad and Brandon’s other guest. Can’t say that I actually fancy going there again, once should have been enough; I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of Chinese food as it is and anyway, as I dine out so infrequently, I’d prefer to sample as many different venues and cuisines as I can. So, unless the restaurant is exceptional, one visit per establishment should the rule of thumb; mind you this advice is coming from the man who’s been to The Man at Arms in Bitteswell   more times than he can remember…hypocrite!

It’s weird at work tonight, apart from the fact that the air-conditioning is freezing us all; we’re almost as busy as we are during the height of the winter period. This is because the call centre has switched on to the summer rota and now each shift is finishing an hour or so earlier than it was previously; so now we no longer have additional staff to 12:00 they all now finish at 11:00 and the 11 O’clock shits shift in turn finishes at 10:00. This means that, from ten to midnight at least, the staff who are taking calls end up handling roughly the same volume of calls as they did during the winter and , in addition to this, that there’s actually a queue of calls waiting to be answered in the middle of April!!!
The Election rolls on with more and more pundits speculating that there’s going to be a hung Parliament. If there is then this could prove to be something of a poisoned chalice for the Liberal Democrats; if they end up holding the balance and do choose who forms the new Government then they could be forever tarred with responsibility for whatever mistakes that Government makes, well, at the very least, the big, big, big mistakes, the real whoppers! Without real electoral reform they’re in a cleft stick; either excluded from real power and influence or doomed to be King Makers and never Kings.
As for the Tories, I still can’t bring myself to trust David “Call me Dave” Cameron; I think a part of me believes that, if you have had a privileged up bringing such as he, then he should at least leave open a few opportunities for the rest of us…the less blessed. Of course, that’ll never happen, if his class didn’t take every opportunity to grab the reins of power they wouldn’t be able to ensure that their entrenched privileges remain entrenched. Why is it that so many Tories remind me of pigs scrabbling to get their heads in the trough? Even the Grandees, the upper aristocracy of the party, who attempt to convey an image on noblesse-oblige cannot, in fact, avoid conveying an air of the assumption of a natural entitlement. They think they’re special, but not in a window licking way, and as such they think they are entitled to be treated specially, unlike we oiks. Well F**k them and the shiny Rolls Royce’s they rode into Town in! If we’ve ever to archive anything e.g. fighting climate change, we won’t do it by electing those who put the preservation their own privileges before the common good.
Aside from the forgoing, I hope, should I ever find myself in a position where I’m canvassing for people’s votes, that I would, at the very least, refrain from using my daughter’s death to garner their support in the way in which, it appears, he is using Son Ivan’s! I may be wrong about this but if I’m not then I find this behaviour utterly despicable and beyond the pale!
What of Labour; indeed what of Labour? They seem to have been wrong footed from the start (the debate over the proposed increase in National Insurance refuses to go away) and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to win an election if you’re continually on the defensive. To give praise where it’s due Gordon Brown’s quick action does appear to have managed to stave off the worst effects of the property crash but it’s difficult to ascertain what the long term effects of such immense borrowing will be; more terrifying is how and from whom we could borrow money if the commercial property meltdown also happens. At present every major bank is holding immense commercial property portfolios that are almost all significantly over-valued.

If a Conservative government had been in power or were to be in power, they would, if only for doctrinal reasons, find it far harder to rapidly revert to Keynesian* economics and perhaps the World would find itself in the depths of a full blown economic depression!

The challenges on the horizon in the 21st century (climate change, peak oil, over population, water wars etc, etc, etc.) all point to a greater rather than lesser role for Government in the running of state’s economies.

BEHOLD THE CHINA MODEL!

This involvement would be far, far greater than the role envisaged for Government in the laissez-faire environment of 1980’s 90’s and 00’s. New Labour or not the management of aggregate demand by the state remains at the heart of much of Labour’s political philosophy. Despite the protests of the Libertarian fringe, Climate change, peak oil and the other items mentioned are really and won’t be contained simply by the invisible hand of the free market economy. So perhaps Labour represents the least bad option?

*Economic theory following the principles of John Maynard Keynes, characterized by a belief in active government intervention in economic matters. Keynes argued that the solution to economic depression was to stimulate the economy through government expenditures as well as reduced interest rates.

**That is I wrote this through the night and I'm very tired form lack of sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz