A Day on The Road

Radio face

I had a tour of a rather magnificent new cancer facility in an NHS hospital today. My presence there was work related and therefore definitely not the stuff for blogging. However it brought home that you simply can't trust politicians with any story. I strongly suspect this beautiful building would never have been built but for the much derided PFI. Health funding is a lot of things, but simple aint one of them. So let's at least stop pretending.

Driving home from my appointment I listened to that Ed Milliband making his speech to the Labour faithful in Liverpool. Oratory really isn't a big part of politics is it these days. I mean that prize pratt Kinnock was a marvellous platform speaker (and I bet he'd be bloody good company in a bar) but it ultimately didn't do him any good. Hague's good but equally unelectable. Milliband isn't a natural. I don't think it's really his thing but you can imagine he's formidable in a meeting. So his speech started badly - mawkish, sloppy and the usual crowd-pleasing digs at the evil Murdoch who one rather gets the impression had himself hacked Millie Dowler's phone. So far so banal. But as he went on he seemed to be talking about things he actually believed in. There was the germ of a big idea knocking around in there dressed up in a nice soundbite that distinguished between producers and predators. He'd hate me for saying it (actually I think he would just hate me anyway - I'll return to this point) but his central tenet is not that far removed in its ambitions from Cameron's Big Society. British politics is not  a battle between good and evil but between ideals of implementation. Or rather it is for folk like me. Not for Ed.

Radio face

Something struck me about the speech. He hates Cameron. He doesn't just regard him as misguided, he thinks he's evil and dishonest. He would think the same of me. Actually he might not - he might overlook my calumny on the condescending grounds of 'forgive them Lord, they know not what they do.' Well here's the point Ed: I am a big boy, I don't pay the top rate of 50% tax, but it doesn't mean that I must automatically have shit for brains to think such tax is wrong. I don't want you to lift me out of my misery, I'd rather do it myself.

One more thing, banging on about 'vested interests' is all very well but you left one out - organised labour. Organised labour, one of the great British industrial monuments and I say that without a trace of irony. But it is an institution that connived in our nationalised industries becoming businesses run exclusively for the benefit of their employees. Cock-up? Yes largely, though I exempt from that explanation the crazed politburo of the NUT. You see in Ed's world when the left gets it wrong it's a cock-up, when the right gets it wrong it's a conspiracy.

Radio face

Now for a bit of balance. I heard a snippet of George Osborne reacting to the Millispeech. Here was a chance to acknowledge the common ground (a good political move as well because it would have pissed Labour off) and invite a sane debate. So what does he do - he slags Milliband off with what was a response clearly written for him before he'd even heard the speech. A pox on the whole bloody lot of you!

Oh and another thing. Having heard the speech on radio I saw some television highlights this evening and was struck how much more I liked it on the radio. This shouldn't matter but he really does have a classic face for radio. Like Kinnock and Hague.