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“The best government in decades” The current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK is, according to this article by Peter Oborne, “the best government for decades”.
He may even believe it, in which case he is utterly mad, or he does not, in which case I have no time to read the output of pranksters.
Shame. This book, The Rise of the Political Class, by Oborne was good, if perhaps imperfect. Oborne is one of those writers, such as Sir Simon Jenkins, who can be insightful one minute, and write utter bollocks the next. Not that I am like that, of course, ahem.
I have tagged this item as “humour”, just in case it was a spoof, or if Oborne has got his calendar wrong and thinks it is 1 April already.
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One of the sad mistakes U K commentators and writers make is to constantly confuse the term “Government” which (though despite its official designation by the Chief Magistrate) is actually no more than an ephemeral administration.
The current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK is, according to this article by Peter Oborne, “the best government for decades”.
Don’t do that, Johnathan – spilt my coffee everywhere.
Clearly I’m out of step here, but that statement strikes me as probably wrong but not egregiously so.
The government before this one was led by Gordon Brown. Worse than this. The one before that was led by Tony Blair. Worse than this. Before that, John Major. About as bad, I’d say. That takes us back to 1992, which is decades.
I haven’t read the article, but on its surface that strikes me as damning with faint praise, indeed. Britain has been governed so badly for so long that statement doesn’t suggest to me that the government is good in any way.
It’s a woefully low bar, yes. We’ve had awful government after awful government for at least 50 years now, possibly longer.
What taxes has the present government reduced?
What powers has the present government got back from the E.U.?
Taxes are higher (not lower) – for example sales tax is now 20%. And there is even retrospective taxation – Barclays 500 million Pounds that they did NOT owe (and this was just last week).
Powers from the E.U.? A lot of tough talk – but no powers actually returned.
Major regulations repealed? Well the government could not do that if it wanted to (due to being in the E.U.) – but clearly does not want to anyway (actually people like “Uncle Vince” Cable and “Ken” Clarke want to add as many new regulations as they can).
“Paul you are libertarian – you are obsessed with the economic side…”
O.K. How has the present government rebuilt the British armed forces?
Errr it has not.
We are still in Afghanistan (now more than 400 British service people killed) for the sake of “spreading democracy”. And the aircraft carriers that carry the jump jets (i.e. the military capacity that is actually of use to this nation – to defend the Falklands and so on) has been scrapped.
So J.P. is clearly correct – and Mr Oborne is clearly wrong.
Thing is, you can’t just make fun of this government, you have to actually find one that’s better. Thatcher is the most recent that’d even be worth considering, and she got the job 33 years ago. If she doesn’t count, then…well let’s just say that 10 Downing was not covering itself in glory between the end of the war and her term, you know?
I cannot read an evaluation like that one without being reminded of a line from the classic paper by Brian Kernighan (the co-creator, with Denis Ritchie, of the C programming language) describing his innovation of RATFOR: a tool to make programming in Fortran less painful.
He reported that many users delivered the verdict “It’s so much better than Fortran” before continuing his article “Although cynics might consider that to be vacuous …”.
Natalie has hit the nail on the head, I think. Thatcher was definitely one to stand up to Europe, which makes her the best PM by kilomiles. And her government ended about two decades ago, so decades would just fit. Just.
“Kilomiles”? My head hurts.