More Cock Ups Than a Cheap Whore?

You know who I feel really sorry for in the fuel crisis fiasco? Those Buddhist monks protesting at the Chinese occupation of Tibet - they had to queue for hours to get enough petrol to set themselves on fire. Some of the poor buggers even found that, after waiting in line for hours, that by the time they reached them, the pumps had gone dry. They had to go to Sainsbury's and buy cooking oil to try and immolate themselves with. Anyway, it seems to be over for the time being so we now find ourselves waiting for the coalition's next cock up. I'm sure we won't have to wait long as, to paraphrase Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles: they have more cock ups than a ten dollar whore. (Ah, the seventies - that era of casual bad taste and offensiveness. How I miss it). The plans for monitoring your web activity, just in case you are a terrorist, is shaping up nicely - let's face it, any policy being fronted by Theresa May is pretty much guaranteed to be a fiasco, not to mention probably stolen from UKIP. (Quite frankly, I don't why MI5 doesn't simply join the al Qeaeda Reunited group on Facebook if they want to track terrorists, or follow Osama bin Laden on Twitter - he's still active there despite supposedly being killed by US Navy SEALS).

Of course, we don't have to worry about the web snooping proposals, because senior Lib Dem MPs are reportedly going to vote against them. Just like they did the NHS 'reforms', student fees, tax cuts for the rich, etc. But getting back to the non-existent fuel crisis - where the government's idiocy sparked panic buying and shortages, which resulted in fuel price hikes - there's still one thing about it which really bugs me: why does Cameron think that the Labour Party should condemn the tanker drivers over their threat to take industrial action? The last time I checked, it was perfectly legal for workers to combine into unions and take action against employers in industrial disputes up to, and including, withdrawing their labour. What kind of country are we living in where workers are condemned for exercising their fundamental rights? Especially when the decision to strike has been ratified by a ballot of the relevant Union members? I know that we're descending to the level of a banana republic, but the slide into authoritarianism is clearly more rapid than I had feared. Personally, I'd like to know when David Cameron is going to condemn his banker friends for continuing to award themselves huge bonuses despite having fucked up the economy - I know they haven't done anything illegal, but neither has the Unite union, so fair's fair. Except that it's not. Fair, that is. Workers are condemned for exercising their legal rights, whereas wealthy tax dodgers are rewarded by having the top rate of tax they pay reduced by George Osborne. There endeth this week's political rant.