Party Games

Give us a Break

Usually when you see a story with a claim of 'hypocrisy' in the title in the politics section of your daily paper you know you are to have a tough time identifying which of the parties to the story best merits the label. The word is a bellwether that almost always warns you of a tale of cheap party point scoring that leaves most adults from outside the Westminster bubble with our head in our hands seriously wondering about the calibre of those that seek to represent us.

Yesterday's offering by Carlin and Isaby in the Telegraph was a typical case in point.

The story centres about one of the less stupid ideas from the Conservatives "Quality of Life" review:

Ministers poured scorn last week on Tory proposals to combat global warming with a raft of new environmental levies — including a "showroom tax" on new cars.

The proposals, from the Tories' Quality of Life review, are now being considered by David Cameron.

They would add £2,000 to the cost of a conventional family saloon to persuade people to switch to environmentally-friendly cars.

Andy Burnham, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, condemned the Tories for unveiling a package of "swingeing green tax rises".

Source: The Daily Telegraph

As the story goes on to explain that it transpires that Labour is planning a tax on new cars that fall into the same 'non-green' bracket of about, erm, £2,000, while the Lib Dems vary the theme slightly by wanting to add the same £2,000 to the same vehicles every year.

This time it is a hapless NuLab moron who has put his foot in the man-trap, but it could just as easily have been either of the other two major parties (trying to make up for my anti-Lib Dem postings with that comment). The same or at least similar policies over which they bicker like kids in the playground, pretending every nuance makes the difference between saving the planet and causing economic meltdown, whilst any adult can see that there isn't a cigarette paper to put between them. The only thing worse is the threefold repetition of 'great for us, disaster for the other two' on every election results programme.

For f***'s sake grow up. Either have distinctive policies, or agree that you've all come to a similar sensible (at least in your minds) conclusion, or, if you lack the maturity to do either, you'll just have to accept that significant parts of the thinking adult population will wish a plague on all your houses and disengage from the debate. The perpetual attempts to score points out of nothing are just a complete turn-off from the political process.

Yes it is late, and yes I am getting grumpy.