Cry Me a River
So, so long MG Rover. Nobody wanted to buy your cars but, somehow, as a company, it has been deemed by certain newspapers of the anti-Labour persuasion that you are more than worthy of a shitful of tax payer's money. The Express, Mail, Times, Telegraph and the rest are all castigating the government for allowing the loss of 5 or 6 thousand jobs to happen and demanding some form of State intervention. Now, WTF is that all about?A private company deserving of State aid? Demanded by the very newspapers that espouse the virtues of raw capitalism: red in tooth and claw? How can this be justified? Ahh, simple; we need to save
Quite, quite commendable. Saving jobs, yes, of course. Such a noble goal, and one that the Government of the day should have made their number one priority. After all, the calamity can't be placed at the door of the blameless managment team who acquired millions of poundsworths of assets for less than a tenner a few years ago. Can it?
S'funny you know, but a few short weeks ago, I'm sure I read in these self-same bastions of the Right that not enough jobs were being sacrificied in the Public sector to finance the tax cuts promised by certain political parties in the run up to Election '05. 22,000 civil servants. All surplus to requirements apparently. Not enough. Sack more of the paper-pushing arseholes cried Fleet Street. No mention of peripheral businesses going to the wall. No mention of us (standard-rate) tax payers having to foot the bill for the inevitable benefits required by a damn site more than the 22,000 dismissed.
Way back in the 70s and 80s. The 'car workers' - as they were so imaginatively dubbed, were the 'enemy within'. The political Right detested the very soil they...err...soiled. Constantly berated them for relying on State handouts to bail them out of their latest catastrophe.
Never, as long as my arse points South, would I have thought that the Daily Express and its ilk would be supporting that industry, and screaming for Government intervention.
Clem Attlee, Hugh Gaitskill, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and John Smith must be sat bolt upright in their graves, smacking their foreheads with the palms of their right hand and saying: "fuck me!" (Unless, of course, they were left-handed. Anybody know?)
A hobble to local number two was on the cards tonight and most welcome it was too. There's only so much surfing, blog-reading, daytime TV watching a man can do without going out on a random shooting spree.
How many houses have I seen transformed over the past fortnight? How many gardens? People? How often have I lay there, foot elevated, TV on and suddenly snorted awake half an hour later? I despair.
I keep coming back to this phrase - Orwellian.
The war against Asiatica is going very well I believe.
Incidentally and for the record. I am with Youngest on this. I DON'T want Malcolm Glazer to take over Manchester United. I'm absolutley convinced he will break up the current agreement to sell all Premier league games under one umbrella payment, thus ensuring that the likes of Crystal Palace still get a payout from Sky (or whoever in the future) everytime United, Arsenal or Chelsea are on TV.
Now that would create an insurmountable wall between the top three or four and the rest.
The next thing after that of course, would be franchise football. Surely?
1 comment:
Great innit how the Tories suddenly want to pitch in and "help" private industry?
Principles aren't cheap so only the conservatives have them apparently.
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