MURKY THOUGHTS ON A SUNNY DAY

Am I the only one to see Murdoch’s murky hand in the latest Tory fund raising scandal? Remember Kelvin McKenzie’s phone call with John Major, “I have a bucket full of shit and I am just about to pour it over your head!”
Thoughts of such revenge must have animated Rupert when Cameron cast him adrift, announcing Leveson, abandoning his beloved Rebecca and leaving him to face the humiliation of a grilling by Tom Watson on the Home Affairs Select Committee.
Murdoch surely knew about some of the shady tactics adopted by the Tory party to raise funds? He saw his moment and pounced, not only getting revenge on Cameron but also demonstrating the need for deception in investigative journalism, thus getting one in the eye against Lord L.
But then again maybe I am just exceptionally cynical.

 The London Mayoral contest throws up some interesting scenarios. Cameron is praying for a victory for Boris, obviously because of the boost this could give to Tory fortunes and not out of any fraternal affection for dear Boris. If Boris looses he will be set free, a loose canon in the Tory party causing Cameron all sorts of mischief. However if Boris does win and he has, which I am sure he does, national aspirations he cannot be thinking of a third term, therefore the Mayoralty becomes a platform for Boris on the national stage. It is already possible to make out the outlines of a Johnson appeal to the Tory party, hostility to Europe and a string of right wing populist measures, socially liberal and fiscally conservative, with poor old Londoners bearing the brunt of his right wing experiments.(Remember you heard it first here).
If Ken wins we are in for more of the same old same old, cronyism, gesture politics and sucking up to a positive zoo full of political creeps, Islamacists and special interest groups, but on a grander scale, for surely even Ken must realise he has a shelf life and will not need to think of another term?
None of this makes for a cheerful prospect for our great capital city.

 The Millionaires budget has been buried under the funding affair. Few budgets can have been so disgustingly skewed to favour the well off at the expense of the poor. Amongst a welter of dismal headlines and interviews with various politicians few sights were quite so depressing as the sight of Vince Cable defending the indefensible; his pathetic dog in the manger look and dry as dust delivery made me think of a busker trying to solicit donations with the aid of nothing more spectacular than a penny whistle.
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