House of Dumb

Joe Kennedy always claimed he'd avoided the crash of 1929 by getting out of the market as soon as he noticed that even shoe shine boys were talking about hot shares. His logic was that as soon as everyone started piling into the market, shares prices would cease to reflect real underlying values and instead they'd bubble up right until the inevitable correction.

In the same spirit, I think I see the beginning of the end for the Dave Bubble, right here.

What are the odds, huh? In all the diverse workforce employed by the World's Greatest Broadcaster, there apparently wasn't a single person to point out that these guys may not the best choice as victims of the dreaded Toricutz.

Inspired by The Dave's trip into the belly of the beast to ask all forty-something nations involved in the European Court of Human Rights racket to agree with his plan to make it less awful, I'm going on a trip to Scunthorpe to demand someone gives me a solid gold Ferrari full of diamonds.

Some might say my plan is a barely coherent fanatsy, but if it doesn't work I'll quit and go home, which at least makes more sense than The Dave's threat that if he doesn't get his way, he will ask them again.

IDS launches the long-overdue drive for a benefit cap and the Maximum Leader is nowhere to be seen. What are the odds, huh?

Call me cynical, but I can't help thinking that this policy was meant as a piece of red meat to be thrown to the idiots (i.e. actual conservatives) before being reluctantly abandoned after 48 hours but, shockingly, it turns out that there really is a huge chunk of the public who object to paying taxes to give people more in welfare than they earn themselves.

They'll be saying the Mail outsells the Guardian next.

See, that's the penalty of basing your policy platform on appealing to a tiny slither of North London. You really do start to think that an income equivalent to £34K gross is the equivalent of Dickensian poverty.

Meanwhile, that creaking sound is one of the central pillars of the left's platform collapsing into dust. They've spent years telling everyone that the Tories are heartless. Now they've got to explain that by 'heartless' they mean 'opposed to taxing people with jobs so they can give some other people more for watching TV than most of the country earns working full time'. Virtually single-handedly IDS has exposed the bogus nature of the poverty industry.

Mind you, Daveism isn't looking much better. The whole essence of Cameroonacy was the idea of going along to get along. Nasty old ideology was thrown overboard, in favour of squelchy, right of left of right of centre consensus. Now IDS have gone ahead with some red meat conservatism and the left has had to hide behind a bunch of unelected men in frocks (who incidentally pay some of their employees far less than £34K).

On the plus side, I guess the left will have to put a hold on its ranting about faith schools for a month or so.

As ever though, when the subject of the Greatest Political Genius In History is raised, you have to ask: what definition of 'genius' are we using here?

Now is this not the perfect metaphor for modern liberalism ? Britain's state broadcaster shifts some facilities from one part of Britain to another part of Britain, but let's not go crazy and expect them to start rubbing shoulders with the locals.

Hey, some of these people have never even heard of hummus.

Personally, I could almost live with the BBC making like Stanley Baker in Zulu, if only we didn't have to listen to their endless jibber jabber about diversity. Their staff roster looks like the United Colours of Liberalism, but they'd rather drink the local water than risk hiring someone who may once have gone to see a non-Premiership football match.