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October 11, 2009
This party's not for learning
As the Tories met in Manchester, Peter Hitchens notes their current concerns are largely problems of their own making. This one goes double for Canada's stealth conservative Tory MPs; so eager to attend freedom of speech events, so reluctant to have the Prime Minister catch them doing it.
It was the Tories, in 1991, who introduced dishonest prison sentences, actually half as long as they looked, and automatic early release. Earlier, in 1984, they passed the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, a liberal
anti-police measure whose codes of practice are the origin of most of the red tape they claim now to be against.
And they too are responsible for the creation of the GCSE exam, the one which asks questions about sausages. Also for the destruction of most of the grammar schools, which provided the sort of state education Mr Gove’s do-it-yourself ‘free schools’ will fail to offer, if any of them actually get opened.
In 18 years of government, they didn’t have the guts to end the subsidies which continue to create fatherless families each year by the thousand, the real, central threat to marriage, the family, social stability, morality and order.
They took us into the EU in the first place, then into the Single European Act, then into Maastricht. Now, their contortions over the EU constitution are a device to hide the fact that, much as they like to bang on about Europe in Opposition, they will be its keen enforcers in government.
None of this has actually changed. They won’t apologise for or renounce any of these errors. It is the same party.
And they too are responsible for the creation of the GCSE exam, the one which asks questions about sausages. Also for the destruction of most of the grammar schools, which provided the sort of state education Mr Gove’s do-it-yourself ‘free schools’ will fail to offer, if any of them actually get opened.
In 18 years of government, they didn’t have the guts to end the subsidies which continue to create fatherless families each year by the thousand, the real, central threat to marriage, the family, social stability, morality and order.
They took us into the EU in the first place, then into the Single European Act, then into Maastricht. Now, their contortions over the EU constitution are a device to hide the fact that, much as they like to bang on about Europe in Opposition, they will be its keen enforcers in government.
None of this has actually changed. They won’t apologise for or renounce any of these errors. It is the same party.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at October 11, 2009 07:03 AM
