Hugging babies, party policies and other recent occurences.

And as time goes by,
I will always be in a club with you
in 1973 ..
Singing here we go again ..

David Cameron has rekindled his annoying habit of talking about happy happy families, in all his Tory smarmyness. Annoyingly, so has Nick Clegg, the Lib-Dem leader with some good policies but a lost cause. Even more annoyingly, these new developments are making them slightly harder to tell apart: two southern blokes, similarly aged, expensively educated, and seemingly both in touch with their feminine side; that is, the one that likes hugging babies.

Please, call me Tony.

In this sense they are becoming unwitting heirs of Tony Blair, who, in a move never really seen before, swept into Downing Street in 1997 to display his family to all. Before that, feminine sides had never really been on the political agenda. Churchill, Thatcher - a feminine side? Gordon Brown has a kid as well but everything about his public appearances and general demeanour just kinda scream that he is a pre-Blair dad, a pre-Blair politician. He is doubtless a caring father, but unfortunately he's fallen into that slot of 'classic Prime Minister' role, the one where Prime Ministers aren't real people but names in well cut blue suits. Leader's inability to pass themselves off as human beings is much more of a problem these days than before.

One is an ordinary chap.

So yes, Nick Clegg has been hugging babies and talking about hugging babies, which, given the Lib Dems record may as well end up as official party policy for all the difference it will make. He seems quickly to be jumping onto the David Cameron bandwagon, which places family values smack bang in the middle of everything, though he'd be unlikely to use the word smack himself. There was a classic Cameron quote recently from BBC news - "What matters most to a child's life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting". Nice one Dave, but wealth does help though, eh mate? This could have been a pretty effective policy pronouncement if Cameron hadn't been to Eton and be one of the smarmiest guys alive. That, and if we knew what the fuck he actually meant. What is "life chances"? If it implied emotional wellbeing, that would work and be a nice message, but it's fairly clear that it's about educational, financial and career success. Basically, a return of the old Tory sentiment 'the better off are better placed'.

I declare babies!

Government intervention in family life is only gonna stick around I reckon. It's pretty cocky to presume that you need a politician to tell you how to bring up your children, or use them as political weapons to gain votes. But, since the economy's still going to pot and touchy-feely political correctness has become a big part of politics, it seems as though the family is here to stay as part of our political battlefield. Joy.

Shit, shit, shit ..

Rant finished, there isn't a great deal of source material under the 'other recent occurences' heading. I've only been working this weekend, which mainly involved dropping glasses and doing sweeps behind the sofas in the bar to see if customers had dropped any money. I'm oh so poor. I'm also filled with dread and a weird sense of pre-determined failure for the upcoming tuesday exam, which will ask me about the German political system in German of all languages, in response to which I will probably cry and slam my fists on my tiny exam table. They say its unhealthy to go in feeling negative, but fuck, it'll take more than the classic 'n'awwww, it'll be fine, people always think they're gonna fail but never do' to convince me. Ruddy German. It's far easier to rant about the British political system than it is to blag an essay about the German one.