I didn’t get to hear or see Gordons’ speech today and being a lazy sod I haven’t really gone looking for it, but from what I have picked up is from here…
• Provide 250,000 free childcare places for two-year-olds.
• Delay the introduction of compulsory ID cards for British citizens.
• Provide a network of supervised homes for 16- and 17-year-old parents.
• Create up to 10,000 green job placements.
• Protect the schools budget.
• Hold a referendum on the alternative vote electoral system after the election.
• Remove hereditary peers in the House of Lords “once and for all”, in the next parliament.
• Give constituents the right to remove corrupt MPs.
• Increase the role of post offices in providing financial services.
So, 250k free childcare places for two year olds. Very good that will help a great deal for some people, but surely wouldn’t it be better to make it so people didn’t need free nursery places, either by working towards a situation where couples do not need have both of them working or by making it so people can afford to pay for their own childcare.
Delay the introduction of compulsory ID cards. Not abandon the idea but delay. It’s still on the cards, as it were. It’ll still gonna happen. It’s just not so subtle as in 1997* when Blair said Labour wouldn’t introduce university top-up/tuition fees and then in 2001* said that that promise was just for the previous parliament.
(*I might be 4 years early with this and it happened in 2001 and 2005)
Supervised home for young parents. ‘Nuff said here.
10,000 green job placements. The word ‘placements’ bothers me. If it was just jobs, fine, but ‘placements’ doesn’t sound very permanent. You used to get a work experience placement at school and then when you left school it was a YTS £40-a-week placement. Neither lasted long.
Protecting schools budgets. Everything else is going then.
Referendum on an alternative voting system. Good.
Remove hereditary peers. Wasn’t that in the 1997 election manifesto?
Recalling MPs. Another good one.
Same for Post Offices.
What is this about (also mentioned here)?
Brown promises 10,000 skilled internships. He wants young people ‘to embrace ambition and British enterprise’
Don’t interns work for nothing but expenses? Is that what Gordon’s promising? If it is, it’s setting the bar a bit low, isn’t it? He wants young people to embrace the ambition of getting a job that pays? Is that it?
I gather ‘change’ appeared a lot* in Gordons’ speech, but surely after twelve years of a government we should be at least on the right track (for the government) and not needing to change too much, otherwise what’s the last twelve years been spent doing?
(*link via qwghlm.co.uk)
Anyway, that’s it. Gordon’s on his way out whatever. Is it time for a proper revolution yet?
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