To keep track of your credit record. Thus limiting your ability to buy a house, build (or rebuild) a business, and even open a basic bank account – despite the fact that almost everything recorded in said credit record is in the gift of private financial institutions who are answerable to nobody and make their own rules about what constitutes a ‘bad’ record. (I’m getting angry as all hell about this now…)

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35) To keep track of all your finances, everything you buy, when and where you bought it.

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Thanks Boris. We’ll shut up now…

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Tune in to Martin Simpson “Righteousness & Humidity” and I’ll forgive you everything. I’d better shut up too as this is close to advertising. R.

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I’ll be as brief as I can…

Sorry I jumped to conclusions. You’ll remember my original query re Conservative Party membership was directed to Boris. Seems a long time ago!

Sorry, too, to hear about Equitable Life. But if regulated companies can make that kind of balls-up, I’m not sure deregulating helps any. Would love to discuss this in depth someday.

Can’t agree about the Poll Tax. I entirely understand about your dad, and I’m not defending the rates, but two injustices don’t make a justice. It seems to me that with all their considerable intellectual powers, virtually any government could have come up with a fairer alternative than those two. You have to make some provision for people’s ability to pay or you’re ignoring Mrs T’s notion of looking after our neighbours.

I took a cheap shot at the army. I admit it. Can’t blame them for the idiot policies of governments that send them into war. I think I meant something different – that it’s always the Conservatives who are quickest to bang the war drum when they’re given the chance. But on second thoughts I’m not even sure about that, now I remember Mr Blair and his pre-war spin. Perhaps it’s just governments operating on the mistaken principle that they need the odd war every now and then to ensure they get re-elected.

Perhaps the mines were in terminal decline. And perhaps they were merely in recession, so that cheaper alternatives suddenly looked more appealing. History will judge that one – it’s too early for us to say. What I can’t forgive is the manner in which it was done: without any real consideration for the people who would be most hurt by the closures. That’s rather like the current legislation against fox-hunting, now I come to think of it, only on a smaller scale.

I entirely agree with you on ID cards, Data Protection, and Mr Blunkett. You forgot to mention the unparalleled mess he made of the A-level system, by the way. As the father of two teenagers, that one’s personal.

I’ve enjoyed this, but I better shut up now. I’m sure Boris is watching!

PS: yes, I could play it. Texas songwriter standard. Please do not take this as any indication of an allegiance to one George W Bush.

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On the other hand, if we’re all to avoid “Blunkett’s Mark”, it is necessary to disseminate the argument as widely as possible. Politicians are not (in general) stupid, and our Boris is a lot cleverer than most, but they are used to being spoon-fed with the arguments, the conclusions, and the tricky questions to ask. A good soundbite goes down well too. However ultimately they all respond to the Whip. And they call that democracy!

Anyway, my objective is to lobby, in whatever way I can, as a private individual and representative of no-one but myself, my MP, the Opposition Spokesmen (sorry Persons), the Data Protection Authority, and anyone else I can think of up to and including God, to stop the wretched Blunkett (and more importantly the Home Office which has pushed for such authoritarian powers for as long as I can remember), from having their way. Does it not strike you as surprising that, in response to “9/11″ a whole raft of repressive legislation, including ID Cards, was ready for adoption. Next time there’s a revolution it won’t be the Aristos for the chop, it will be the Bureaus, and I’ll bring my knitting!

Finally, I can’t let you get away with all the negative bits unchallenged. No, I don’t support the war, but if you are in politics and therefore in some way responsible for/answerable to the soldiers out there, you can’t kick them (or the Government that sent them there) where it hurts. Mining in the UK was in inevitable decline, we could have a long chat about the role of Government in subsidising failed industries, but I suspect that this is not the place, similarly regulation of the “City”. As a “wise virgin” I made provision for my old age, trimmed my wick and made sure that there was oil in my lamp. Then I lodged my lamp with Equitable Life. They were “regulated”! Finally the “Poll Tax”. Has the right policy ever been so badly sold, and implemented. You’ll find it hard to convince me that it’s right that my 93 year old Dad, paid (until the recent death of his wife’s brother also a pensioner living in the house) the same “community charge” as the family next door, a couple with three working children. Who was consuming the resources? The principle that all the users of a state provided service (and by the way there’s far too much of it) pay for it, which is what the poll tax tried to do, seems to me to be far more egalitarian.

Russell

p.s You didn’t say whether you’d be able to play the “Martin”

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Couldn’t agree more, me old mate. No-one’s ENTITLED, by accident of birth or benefit. In context, Mrs T seemed to be thinking in particular about homeless people somehow expecting to be housed. I prefer to think about the CEOs of large companies who assume it’s their right to take all their bonuses despite overseeing appalling performance. Then I scan back to her notion that we must also ‘look after our neighbour’ and I find myself wondering which of these two types of neighbour needs the most looking after.

I don’t agree with her on that one. There IS such a thing as society. That’s why we have governments in the first place – and someone who played the game of politics as wilfully as Mrs T should surely have understood that. The trick is to choose a government that inspires rather than stifles. But if you want it to work, you better make sure it inspires all the people – from one end of SOCIETY to the other.

I’ve been around for ages, but I’ve yet to see any evidence of Conservative interest in inspiring the homeless (just by way of using Mrs Thatcher’s example, you understand). Unless you want to espouse that trickle-down nonsense they were so fond of in the 80s, of course.

Oh dear. Perhaps I should be posting this to my own blog, rather than use up space on Boris’s. He’s gonna be mad at me…

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Ah well. You have the better of me then. I’ve never been a paid-up member of any political party. They all break your heart in the end. We should probably reform our ‘democratic’ system first, then see if it can support genuine freedom of thought.

Meanwhile, I’m still baffled that you (and apparently Boris) appear to have accepted the Conservative Party as the cradle of liberty. I’ve lived among Conservatives all my life, and I’m sorry to report that the only liberty 90% of them understand is the freedom to look after Number 1.

Maybe I misunderstood something. I’ve just never seen the Poll Tax, the destruction of the mining industry, the deregulation of the City of London, and the slavish support of ‘our boys’ overseas (irrespective of the legitimacy of the conflict) as evidence of original, rebellious, independent thought. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I remain bewildered. Why the Conservatives??

All the best

Mark

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Do you mean a “Liberal” or a “Liberal Democrat”. I was a paid-up member of the former, but left when John Pardoe lost out to David Steel, for it was clear that he was intent on selling Liberalism down the river. He did! Now the “Liberal Democrats” are the most illiberal, anti-democratic, interfering, bullying … I could go on … and I’m ashamed that they dare use the word “Liberal” in their title. My dilemma is what’s left? To accept Suppression, or support Rebellion, or Anarchy?

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I do hope Boris DOES read these pages. If he doesn’t he damn well ought to. Putting your name to a Blog and then taking no notice of it is as stupid as the Beckhams publishing an autobiography they clearly haven’t read…

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