Yellow Water on the Run

Agreeing to Be Seen to Disagree

Last month Nick Clegg said to David Cameron: "“If we keep doing this we won’t have anything to bloody disagree on in the bloody TV debates.”

And now looking at the election leaflets though the door; on the one side of their Focus news-sheet the Liberal Democrats wail, "Tories destroy Devon", while on the other side they trumpet "LIB DEMS 1st YEAR IN GOVERNMENT" with little vignettes celebrating nice things they have done for us ... er ... hang on a minute ...

Just how dim-witted do they think we are?

Meanwhile those cabinet colleagues, Cameron and Cable are, sure enough, busy generating column inches of "disagreement" over immigration.

I'm not the only one to smell a rat here, Sarah Hayward does too: "Vince’s intervention, Cameron’s speech and the pre & post media coverage of both appeal directly to core voters of both parties and it’s clearly designed to enable both Coalition parties to express a separate identity prior to polling day in May."

Thick and Thicker

Here’s the latest whinge from the boudoir of Mrs 70% Fiction ...

In Their Common Cause

Is corruption a “political right” ... wtf? says Kalsoom at Chup blog.

While over in Europe you might be forgiven for thinking that this guy had escaped from a Panto.

Oh no. He’s a Minister.

 'Zero pointe' from Massimo for Minister La Russa then, while the hero of the performance, Luca Cafagna - when he can get a word in edgeways - puts his case, in devastating contrast with good-humoured dignity, while the Minister yells him down as "coward" :

“The event [December 14^th] … was the 'expression of social rage of a generation that has always [been] kept out and that is not represented politically. We take to the streets to demand rights and the answer is always a turn away … there is a blockage at the institutional level, a separation between what happens in Parliament and what happens outside. … you can not talk about the reaction of a lunatic fringe, "The incidents that happened - he said - were, even by very young people who live this locked state.” Google translation.

And over the great divide, in Yankeeland here's senator Mike Pence proclaiming the Gospel that the saintliest richest Americans must not, under any circumstances, relinquish the tiniest bit of their wealth to help poor Americans - we are all the same after all:

"The minimum that we have to do right now for Americans that are struggling in unemployment in this economy is make sure that no American sees a tax increase ..."

And to cap it off, before anybody thinks we're any better here, those clever MPs have discovered a new ploy:

“Some are earning thousands of pounds by letting out the second homes they bought with public funds, then moving into a rented third home nearby – and claiming Commons expenses on that instead.”

Tories Do It With Money

The Yorkshire Ranter and Matthew Turner uncover “a strange and contradictory mix of complexity and simplicity” amongst everyday Tory folk, while Land Matters blog sets Richard Murphy pondering the tax haven based landlords of Millbank Tower.

Guilty Consciences

It’s the politicians that are protesting too much. Now why would that be?

Cory Hazlehurst at Liberal Conspiracy or at his own blog, Paperback Rioter, on the reaction of the political classes to the Woolas affair.

Stuart Jeffery on Tory politicos hypocritically knee-jerking about behaviour at student demo. Funny how it’s all 'high jinks' when Hoorays like them do it for fun, but 'criminal destructiveness' when ordinary people feel desperately driven to similar acts.

Priceless it Ain't

For paying off Labour's Spads after 2010 General Election? ..... £1.8m

Hat-tip: Yorkshire Ranter