I'm back!

Oddly, things don't look much better despite my week off. We've had the quite appalling Al-Megrahi affair; when someone like the son of Libya's leader describes your government as "disgusting and immoral" and you find yourself agreeing, you know things are bad. (Oddly, the BBC missed out that criticism of New Labour in their report on the same statement...)

Labour can't even agree a line on what they had previously wanted for Al-Megrahi - apparently, they didn't want to release him, but nor did they want him to die in jail. Perhaps Labour have found the elixir of life? As I commented at the original post, it's almost as if they are making this up as they go along - which is odd as we are talking about the past; surely if one were being truthful, then there would be no uncertainty about what you had previously wanted?

Anyway, they have now announced the Autumn fightback plan, in which they will reduce overall spending. These are not cuts, of course - that may be what we need, but "cuts" are what you call it when Tories reduce spending. No, they will be "revisiting the original New Labour approach of public service reform", by ... errr ... reducing spending. Presumably, when Labour reduce spending, they do it in a nicer way? Do they say "please" and "thank you"?

But either way, there you have it; New Labour's approach to reform is .... to wait 12 years, then get spending down to only a bit more than it was when they took office by eliminating the wasteful spending that they initiated. Go Gordon!

Actually, on second thoughts, I'll rephrase that. Gordon; Go.