An Unprincipled Man

Trying to stay on course with schemes and plans seems to be getting ever more difficult.  There are too many things happening in the wider world to distract us from our intended paths.  Which is what has happened to me this week.  First of all I get distracted by some nonsense at work, then my plans to deal with that are derailed when I'm distracted by the recent events in Paris.  (Although I still intend taking defensive action with regard to work and did find time to engage in some related subterfuge today).  So, to confound expectations further, I'm now going to go off at a complete tangent and take a quick detour into political ranting.  For a moment today I thought that David Cameron was taking a principled stand on something when it was announced that he would refuse to participate in any televised leaders' debates during the forthcoming general election campaign unless the Greens were included along with UKIP.  To put it in context, OFCOM has ruled that the Greens aren't a 'major' political party and therefore shouldn't be included in said debates, whereas they decided that UKIP is a 'major' political party.  Which, on the face of it, makes it seem that Cameron is standing up for 'fair play' and common sense, (after all, until a couple of Tory MPs defected to UKIP, they weren't represented in the Westminster Parliament, unlike the Greens who actually have an elected MP). 

But it's never that simple with Old Etonian PR man and oily bastard Cameron.  The fact is that he knows the main broadcasters can't include the Greens in these debates - if they were to do so, they would face legal action from the SNP, who would point out that they had more MPs than either the Greens or UKIP.  If the SNP were included, then Plaid Cymru and the various Northern Irish parties with Westminster representation would doubtless also take action to be included.  The end result would be to render the debates completely unwieldy and risk having them diverted into discussing purely regional issues.  So, the actual outcome of Cameron's 'principled' stand is to get an 'out' from the debates without actually withdrawing from them, which would look hugely negative to the public, giving the impression that he was afraid to face the other party leaders.  Which he is.  The fact is that Ed Miliband has consistently got the better of Cameron at Prime Minister's Question Time for quite a while now - under pressure Cameron tends to bluster, coming over as the public school bully that he is.  Whilst this fact tends to escape the electorate due to the fact that the right wing press simply don't report Cameron's poor performances in the Commons, in a televised live debate Cameron would be publicly exposed.  No matter how much the right wing press were to try and spin his poor performances, the public would have seen them for what they were.  So, Cameron's stand on the debates is actually as unprincipled as the rest of his policies.