Dave's great achievements.

As it is nearly 2 years down the track since the last Election, I have been pondering on what this absurd coalition has achieved and what Dave has done to earn his wages.

First, the sheer size of the public sector. It is difficult to track down reductions in staffing levels, as the latest published figures appear to be for the 1^st quarter of 2011. What is clear is that the pay-bill has actually gone up as numbers have declined, and there is an increasing differential between pay in the public and private sectors. A bit of ‘make hay’ going on here? And the public sector is still 23% of the work-force.

But Dave has pulled the rug out from under REMPLOY, putting 1700 disabled workers on the scrap heap. I suppose every little helps.

The armed forces have had their numbers cut by 10% so far, with more to come. Who needs them? It’s not all bad. There has not been a single redundancy in the MoD and its agencies, so they can continue to out-number uniforms even more.

And on the subject of defence, for the first time since Henry VIII we don’t have a single man-of-war in British waters. So it should not be difficult to put a rubber duck-based RPG into one of our coastal oil refineries. Al Qaeda, come on down! We are building a couple of aircraft carriers that will not have any planes and no AWACs cover, so they should be cheap to run. And we have sold all the  Harriers to the Yanks and broken up newly-refurbished Nimrods, so no future Government will be able to put the clock back, something that Francis ‘Flipper’ Maude hates.

Dave is sticking to his guns – or, rather, other peoples’ guns, in Afghanistan. We don’t know why we are there; certainly not to frag Al Qaeda who have long since gone. It would save a huge amount of taxpayers’ money, not to mention lives,  if we simply pulled out forthwith, but Dave must know what he’s doing. Mustn’t he?

We can all feel terribly virtuous at increasing our aid to our Commonwealth cousins, and a lot of others, by 37% so that India and Pakistan can afford their membership of the Nuclear Club, and enable President Bungrafta of Wherawi to buy an executive jet for himself and lots of Mercs for his mates (and expel the British High Commissioner for raising an eyebrow).

At least Dave is concentrating on priorities, instead of messing about with trivia such as the economy, immigration and Laura Norder.

For example, there is the vital topic of gay marriage. Then there’s reform of the House of Lords, and fixed parliaments so that we will have coalitions forever.

What of civil liberties and the rolling back of the 3500 new criminal offences introduced by Blair to make criminals of us all?

There is some good news here; you will no longer need a licence to stage a Punch & Judy show.