A difference of opinion

Last week's comprehensive spending review has resulted in a disappointing but predictable rehash of ‘Conservatives out to destroy the poor’-type headlines that I first remember reading during the 1980’s. Regardless of your political outlook they didn’t make a lot of sense then and they certainly don’t now. Logically, why would a ruling party set out to deliberately alienate a large section of the voting public? The answer is simple, they wouldn’t; they might not do a very good job but they wouldn’t intentionally do a bad one. There, I’ve stated the bleeding obvious but, you know, just in case…

I suspect we’ll always be assaulted with this sort of nonsense of which there’s no better practitioner than Polly Toynbee. Polly, who I only read for the comedy, outdid herself on Monday by holding forth on the Conservatives ‘final solution’ for housing the poor. Come to think of it, it’s not that funny, perhaps I should be insulted and that might be the intention, but after the pleasure of seeing her make an idiot of herself there’s the sigh at another act playing to the home crowd. Points on for winding up the Tories but points off for losing the neutrals and more points off if the intention was to help the poor, for invective rarely changes and often entrenches opinion. There's also the suspicion that such talk isn’t just to rally the faithful but to keep them in line. Can you imagine what would happen to the poor bastard brave enough to put up his hand and suggest:

Maybe they just have a different point of view?