Signs will read Dorking 50 (quid, not miles). Instead of Little Chefs, motorways will boast Little Banks offering second mortgages to complete your journey. Wealthy sorts will drive in business class lanes (roomier; softer concrete).
Arguments about government initiatives can be finely balanced but road charging is a policy so bonkers you fear Darling is drunk in charge of a government; has he swigged too much eyebrow dye? Existing taxes on petrol are fair. We pay in proportion to how much we drive and the Inland Revenue looks to the fuel efficiency of company cars when charging us for the benefit. But Ali D will charge a Smart car as much as a dumb Hummer (or a belching ministerial Jaguar).
If he must punish wicked motorists for driving to work he could bring in tolls on ultra-congested roads such as the M25 and M6. Why waste billions on hardware when ministries are incapable of even operating their own software? That, however, is almost trivial: what should drive motorists really mad is the intrusion. Wherever you are, the government will know. So if you are bunking off work or just heading for a solitary stroll on a salty beach, fear not, your secret is safe with the secretary of state for transport. What with ID cards and police cameras, your every move is tracked.
And then companies will join in the fun. Already they electronically tag workers. They also insert microchips in their products to keep tabs on customers. We are all, it seems, suspects now.
At least sad exhibitionists on Big Brother enjoy being ogled — the rest of us just want our privacy back.
This is the real death of liberal England. How those enemies of freedom, the mad bad mullahs, must be laughing — oops, we won’t be able to say that when the new legislation on religious hatred is passed.
But who is protesting? The often sensible Mark Oaten of the Liberal Democrats struggles to be heard, and aside from one thoughtful leadership contender, David Davis, many Tories are alarmingly authoritarian. The state, bloated on tax but bereft of real ideas, is a juggernaut out of control. And we cowering citizens are being crushed under its wheels.
What, pray, do you call drugs in the playground? School dinners. An exaggeration, sure, but increasingly pupils are drugged up to their eyeballs. And this drug use (or abuse) is perfectly legal. Indeed, it is requested of GPs by parents. Don’t believe me? Talk to David Laws, the young Liberal Democrat.
He says fellow MPs are finding examples across the country of children being given drugs to calm them. It might make baby psychos easier to control, but they can’t learn much: forget school trips, think tripping. Most shockingly Laws tells me some parents want their child placed on “medication” as this can help mummy and daddy gain disability benefit.
Schools are facing a nightmare. Thanks to Baroness Warnock, problem children have been lumped in with ordinary pupils, to the detriment of both. Warnock now admits this was wrong, but schools are left to pick up the pieces (Laws says even primary schools now feel compelled to exclude pupils: terror tots).
We are breeding an underclass that is left entirely untouched by education. And despite Blairite babble about “specialist” schools, one burgeoning specialism remains completely uncatered for: delinquency.
Fiona's worth every penny
Dumb, suntanned pretty-boys (and girls) paid to bask in front of camera: no, not Celebrity Love Island but hated celebrity newscasters. Those puritans Andrew Marr and John Humphrys have attacked Fiona Bruce, Huw Edwards et al for earning too much.
True, making £400,000 a year reading an Autocue ain’t bad. But many footballers can’t read anything, and they can earn more than that a month. Cherie Blair picks up a bundle for a few observations about soft furnishings in No 10. If the sexily husky Bruce encourages folk to think about Darfur rather than Nip/Tuck, then it seems churlish to complain, whatever the price.
From rare telly stints I can tell you it is not so easy: palms sweat, throat croaks, mind blanks. And that’s before you go on. Good anchors convey authority too (Gall, Burnet, McDonald). They may, like actors, only read lines, but as any film with Arnie Schwarzenegger suggests, it’s a task that’s very easy to mess up.
Labourites redistribute wealth - to themselves
Having recently trousered his last set of EU expenses (as a wise old boy once told me, if you are tired of expenses, you are tired of life), Lord Kinnock of Windbaggery did not hang about. He pocketed a contract lobbying for the shipping magnates he once regulated as EU transport commissioner. Even Cherie Blair might have pondered the propriety.
His other EU job, amusingly, was to tackle graft, although he fired one whistleblower for exposing the scandal of the EU’s accounts.
When Cherie and co are finally put out to grass, in which meadows will Labour’s fatted cows graze? Alistair Darling, perhaps, will wind up at Kroll, the corporate private eyes. Tony Blair could give lectures, sponsored by arms broker Adnan Khashoggi, who must have done well out of his wars. David Blunkett might bag a column on a tabloid, reward for all the fatuous stories he fed them about crime crackdowns. Is this what socialists meant by wealth redistribution?
It is all about salesmanship. So why doesn’t Tony Blair revive the idea of a two-speed Europe — but this time present Britain as the one in the fast lane? Nations that want a truly free single market in which we can take over each other’s companies would be entitled to move ahead — under a new common trade policy. This would replace the evil common agricultural policy.
Bad Europeans, like the French, who still cling to a sad, tatty old nationalism, would be free to sulk in the station. Italy, struggling with the euro, might be invited to hop on board with the new European power train, Britain, and adopt a new, dynamic single currency: the pound. We would be called the New European Union. Worth it, if only to see Jacques Chirac’s face.
