Two Penn’orth: Six degrees of aggravation

The Tories announced their six election themes this week. Most original they are too. I present them to you thus:

**Act now on debt to get the economy moving.** This is the kind of specificity that the Conservatives are about. While the other parties intend to sit back and be complacent on the economy, the Tories are going to _act now_. Not soon. Now. No messing about.

**Get Britain working by boosting enterprise.** Again, with Labour and the Lib Dems planning to sap money from small businesses to fund the complacency and decadence that prevents them from _acting now_ on the economy, the Conservatives will be boosting them.

**Make Britain the most family friendly country in Europe.** This is necessary, as we are currently hostile towards families. Just the other day I kicked a group of children in the shins and tried to divorce their parents. This is wrong. And this pledge in no way means that the Tories will be negative towards single parents and alternative family set ups. Of course not; it’s not like they’re planning on “recognising marriage in the tax system” like other less progressive parties. (I think I’ve got that the right way round.)

**Back the NHS.** Of course, we all knew this was the plan thanks to David Cameron’s giant shiny face in Leamington. As we also know, Labour is planning to fire all the doctors and sell all of the machinery due to their cuts programme, so it’s lucky Mr Cameron is defending the NHS for us against the onslaught of the other evil parties.

**Raise standards in schools.** Labour wants to lower them, of course.

**Change politics.** First of all, perhaps, the Tories’ way of being specific would help get rid of the vagueness that other politicians indulge in.

They also announced their slogan – ‘Vote for change’ – which in no way is evocative of a relatively successful politician in America who Cameron has been trying to emulate for two years.

Okay, my sarcasm gland is failing. These pledges are five parts so vague that they could apply to the hopes of any party or, in fact, any person on the country, and one part worryingly regressive. This whole ‘change’ theme that the Tories have been kicking around for a few months now is such a misnomer. If they are trying to change the crude politicking we see in Westminster, they fail – they have been the worst offenders for smear politics and bandwagon joining in the lead-up to the election year.

However, if they are trying to change a politics still clinging to some form of integrity into one based solely on soundbites and personalities, in that sense they may well succeed.