Tory Idiots # 3,432 : Iain Duncan Smith

There is nothing particularly unusual about a politician having inconsistent views or failing to think through a policy proposal. But Iain Duncan Smith has gone a step beyond by insisting that benefit claimants should limit their family to two children (he calls it 'cutting their cloth'). First, Mr Smith is a Roman Catholic and thus presumably accepts his Church's teachings that contraception is not permissible. Neither can he be expecting that families who accidentally fall pregnant for a third time should have an abortion. (Pope Paul VI, 1968, encyclical letter Humanae Vitae). Which just leaves sexual abstinence. Is that what he is actually proposing? Secondly, what of the family who already have more than two children before falling sick or becoming unemployed and claiming benefit, such as Mr Smith who has four children? Are they to abandon the surplus somehow? Perhaps to a Catholic orphanage, a solution popular with the authorities in the 18th and 19th centuries. Or perhaps Mr Smith hopes to persuade Mr Osborne to reverse the recent cuts of £1.86 billion (NSPCC estimate, 2011) made to local authority funding for children's services so that the surplus can all be taken into care. 

Good luck with that one, Mr Smith!

[Note: Mr Smith is not proposing as Herr Hitler did that we should cut the goolies off the poor, unemployed, disabled or unemployed. That would also amount to contraception.]

Tory Idiots #371: George Osborne

Virgin trains are to be commended for their discretion in attempting to calm the somewhat embarrassing episode in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer failed to buy the correct ticket for his journey from Wilmslow. It is reported that Osborne's flunky attempted to negotiate with the ticket inspector but, in any case, Osborne eventually did pay up the difference between standard and first class and he was thus spared the indignity of having to move into standard and brush shoulders with the plebs.

But the fact remains that Osborne knew when he got on the train that he only had a standard ticket but nevertheless sat in first class. If paying the difference was not an issue, why not buy a first class ticket to start with? The suspicion remains therefore that he intended to get away with not paying the difference and would have done so had it not been for the diligence of the ticket inspector.

Tory Idiot # 2,437: Chris Grayling

If this Tory twonk, Chris Grayling, tries to gain entry into your house uninvited, it will be alright with him if you bash him on the head with a mallet. Whether or not that would knock any sense into him is another matter.

Speaking at the Conservative Party conference, Grappler Grayling announced that as Secretary of State for Justice he intends to change the law so that householders will be permitted to beat seven bells out of (or otherwise kill destroy or mutilate) any intruders so long as such behaviour is not 'grossly disproportionate'. This edict serves to illustrate the perils involved in appointing someone to the post of Justice Secretary who is not a lawyer and, moreover, is a reactionary twit who lacks the mental capacity to think things through sufficiently. The law already allows a chap to use reasonable force against intruders - and what counts is what seems reasonable to the victim (i.e. householder being intruded upon) in the circumstances. What it doesn't permit is chasing after the miscreant and shooting him in the back, or rounding up your in-laws to hunt the bastard down and stab him to death and/or lynch him. Such behaviour would be, errm, disproportionate and is what, under the existing law, the Crown Prosecution Service would call 'very excessive or gratuitous force' which would lead to a prosecution. So Mad Dog Grayling plans to change the law so that it provides for what it already provides for. But saying that at the Conservative Party conference wouldn't get you a round of applause, would it?