Cards on the table

Although the Queen will be delivering her speech in a slightly posher accent than the bloke who wrote it, many have been pointing out that the contents will probably sound remarkably similar.

In July the Gord gave his pre-Queen's Speech to the assembled Chamber in which he outlined many of his key ideas and policies to a rapt audience: plans for "citizens' juries," "consultation" and lots of wonky, interleckshual sounding stuff involving the words "progressive" and "consensus". No, we don't either.

All very well and good, but hasn't this handed the Boy Cameron some much needed ammo? Citizens' juries seem to be averaging £100,000 a pop with nearly a million spent on the future of the NHS juries alone so far. This wouldn't be so bad if they were actually - you know - contributing to the discourse in a meaningful way, but there are suggestions that they are just focus groups with a slightly more expensive biscuit selection.

And then there's all the "listening to the people" stuff: how does the Gord's decision on the EU Treaty fit into that theme?

Whilst this is all very likely to be overshadowed by the rumoured plans to increase the detention limit for terror suspects to 56 days, Westmonster still wonders about the advisability of presenting the Opposition with a barrel of fish and a loaded firearm three months before you plan to stand up and make a speech about how fabulous your selection of koi carp are.

Just a thought.

Written by Lloyd Shepherd on 6 Nov 2007 10:01 AM. Permalink