Announcing - nothing

22/11/2011 9:58 am

Nobody has given me any feedback at all.

It was not being discussed on the train this morning.

It appears to not even be a news story today.

As monumental policies go, this one is not even a small plaque in the long grass.

22/11/2011 1:50 pm

That is why it is the duty of a competent government to communicate clearly and exactly, and not present thoughts and wish lists as fact and new law.

Perhaps if they had called their 'strategy' a 'collage of ideas new and old' and been clear that little was agreed or to be enacted, people would have understood the message clearer.

The media also do not help when they print 'how do the changes effect you' style items - clearly these had been based on the PR from government owing to their timing, and clearly there is some embarrassment resulting in the near silence in the media today.

Blair was bad enough with the presentation over substance, and in the end even the presentation fell away. But this lot are not even making a good job of the presentation, or hiding the lack of substance. Instead, their only achievement has been to successively blame others with a rapid changing focus to perpetuate belief.

It must be embarrassing to be an opposition without an alternative, but it is more embarrassing to be a government without a plan.

22/11/2011 8:26 pm

That's a bit harsh on someone who's only offence is being a member of the public and believing what they think they are told - OK, that's how we get the governments we have, but what's the alternative, abandoning universal suffrage?

08/12/2011 2:14 pm

Colleagues are reporting that enquiries about how to access the new government right to buy scheme are still coming in every day, and resulting in disappointment after disappointment.

Is there anyway to communicate to the Housing Minister that he needs to announce the truth about his non-announcement so that housing staff are not wasting even more time clearing up over his lack of clarity and detail - or at least announce a date when he will announce what it is his announcement was about.

09/12/2011 1:04 pm

Media Manipulation and Spin not something the government should take responsibility for then Nonnie?

09/12/2011 2:42 pm

Ok nonny - as you say then it must be.

There are no little munchkins working for the government guiding the media on what to emphasise in a story. There was only ever Andy Coulson, and now he is otherwise a little busy, there is nobody else inside the government or the party briefing the press.

Equally the CLG never issued a press guidance or public FAQ saying the details of when and how RTB will work would be part of the Housing Strategy - and of course the PM never presented the item in language that suggested these were changes already made.

Of course not nonny - never happened and never does.

09/12/2011 4:08 pm

The other point about this flurry of callers is that people are still game for the something for nothing culture introduced by Thatcher and perpertuated by Blair.

How odd it is that supporters of the right to buy are supporting the gifting of large sums of taxpayer money to people who are not the elite, and the sharing of their debt across the remaining reduced community of tenants, but for that to be paid for, in part through housing benefit funded by the taxpayer.

Why do these taxpayers want to see their hard earned taxes poured into individual pockets this way, and then have to pay higher taxes to repay the debt for years afterwards?