Oh, and for the benefit of working class readers with incorrigibly dirty minds, SMEG in this context refers to a range of posh retro style domestic appliances that are currently de rigueur in W11. OK?

Eh? I was thinking Red Dwarf fans for whom the tidea that ‘Cameron’s got a SMEG fridge’ would indicate he’s crap at choosing good domestic appliances (as well as policies).

I think fridge magnet poetry is being too kind, you can make some good stuff with that.

I’m certainly not arguing that the Labour Party rejoinder will pack any more intellectual substance.,/blockquote>
Thank Christ for that, for Cameron talks crap, Brown and Balls bullshit and Clegg cack. All full of vague, woolly,indefinite words lifted from the neo-liberal managerialists’ handbook, occupying much airtime to convey nothing of substance.
This pre-election ‘phony war’ is sapping my will to live with the acres of newsprint, petabytes of webspace all given over to empty,careerist posturing with unenforceable pledges, and supposed analysis. How can you analyse a vacuum? Oh, someone will say it’s all about the narrative. I disagree, because that weasel-term is just another way of spinning and putting style and presentation over substance.

memo to self: check html tags.

Rob Grant and Doug Naylor claim they were unaware ‘smeg’ existed before they used the word in Red Dwarf but I reckon you’d have to be a total gimboid to swallow that.

I cannot listen to Cameron without thinking that I am being hectored by the headteacher of a junior (or in his case, prep) school. He is so patronising treating us all as if we are rather slow 6 year-olds. I keep wondering if he fails to become Prime Minister will he put us all into detention?

Then there is the poster campaign. It is so presidential. Not “the conservatives will cut the deficit”, not “the conservative treasury team will cut the deficit”, but “I, David Cameron, with my sword of fiscal probity, will cut the deficit”. This is a man who has no limits to what he thinks he can do (I guess that is what he has always been told). Clue to cameron: we do not have a presidential system. You are not as important as your MPs. You cannot be Prime Minister unless enough of your candidates get elected. Don’t ever forget that you need them far more than they need you (they have a habit of stabbing their leaders in the back…)

The “change agenda” stuff is interesting. Of course, some dimwit CCHQ strategist was in the US in 2008 taking notes and thought “hmmm, use the word ‘change’ and your man gets elected”. Dimwit, here’s a clue for you. Obama came from a modest background and despite that he has achieved – first as a talented lawyer, then as a college professor, and finally as a politician. He’s worked his way up the hard way: he is in the position he is now, not because of his background, but despite his background. Dimwit, your leader has always been privileged, he has got his position because of his privilege, he has never had to work for it like Obama did. Obama’s “change” was not just marking a change in the policies in the US, it was a change in politics itself: no longer should the president be the domain of the privileged classes groomed for the position; that has changed and a poor kid who was clever and worked hard could be president too! This is not a message that can be applied to Cameron, in fact Cameron is totally the opposite!

Some thoughts on the Tory marriage proposals:

Their thinking is this: children from married families do better in life. That’s probably true, but it’s not the fact that their parents are married, per se, that is the cause of that statistic. Bribing otherwise feckless parents into marrying won’t suddenly render them wonderful raisers of kids.

It’s magical thinking, and irrational on two counts. The first, as I’ve said, is that they have correlation and causation backwards – I would imagine that parents who are more likely to be married are simply in more stable relationships anyway. The second is that their line of argument relies on believing that a marriage certificate imparts on those whose names it bears some superior moral status. A bad parent wakes up one day, trots down the aisle, and then, what do you know – their parenting improves. That is, as both the LibDems and the labour party pointed out, absurd.

What this plan will do is incentivise people to marry hastier than they would otherwise have done – which can only undermine the institution, such that it is, increase divorce rates, and undermine the very correlations the move is designed, ostensibly, to promote! It will also, as a consequence, fill the coffers of lawyers. Perhaps that’s the ulterior motive?

Why should I, a single man, not engage in a civil partnership with my best friend as a strategic way of saving money? That’s precisely what this policy turns into a rational decision – arbitrarily marrying the first person who comes along, in order to save some cash.

Look at how the numbers stack up:

- Minimum cost to marry in the UK £103.50 http://bit.ly/8TBUMA
- Minimum cost to divorce £340.00 http://bit.ly/8TBUMA

So, if Cameron’s plan saves the couple say £500 each over the course of the marriage, it’s worth doing. We don’t yet know Cameron’s numbers, of course, but if it’s pitched to only save that cost over a long period of time, it wouldn’t work as intended anyway. I think we can safely assume that making hasty marriages of convenience financially sensible must be an inherent feature of the policy.

Anyone supporting this plan because it “supports marriage” (I’m looking at you, Daily Mail) is an idiot.

I cannot listen to Cameron without thinking that I am being hectored by the headteacher of a junior (or in his case, prep) school. He is so patronising

And Patricia Hewett, Margaret Hodge, Tessa Jowell, Barbara Follett and Harriet Harman make you feel you are being addressed as an adult?