Tap-dancing round the truth: is Cameron as good as the Bliar?

I see Mr. Cameron has told us we have some "heavy lifting" to do to tackle the dreadful deficit.

This reminds me of the old joke about the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian side-kick, Tonto.

They were surrounded by what the military now call in their dire jargon “hostiles”.

“Sioux ahead of us,” yelped the Lone Ranger. “Apache to the left. Comanche to the right. Seminole at the back of us. What shall we do?”

“What’s all this ‘we’ shit, white man?” came the reply.

The “we” that politicians deploy with such fine abandon means of course us – not them. We will be doing all the lifting, and it will be that much heavier because he has done far, far too little tackling.

After all the huffing and puffing, the deficit is actually scheduled to grow by, I believe, £650 billion in the next four years.

I did say repeatedly last year that Cameron could well be in the Bliar’s league when it comes to tap-dancing round the truth.

That's a pretty good start.

Could even the Flatulent Toad Brown have come up with something which so totally ignores the simple facts - which are that he hasn't started the job. If you're going to sweep away all the people sucking at the public tit, get a big brush and sweep mightily. Don't just push little piles of parasites from one spot to another.

Anyhow, if he fails to screw things up, don’t worry. The Unions are busy planning to make everyone’s life a misery in the spring, just to coincide with the royal wedding.

They are complaining about the cuts. The ones that haven't happened. And they want us to keep coughing up. From what? From an even bigger deficit.

Our world is divided into two types of people. Those who make the money. And those who piss it away. The politicians and the union leaders have one thing in common. They are pissers, not earners.

Happy New Year.

Typical landing page rubbish: 231 words, one misprint and not a bloody clue

You really have to wonder how some people survive.

I just read the landing page (wrong layout, no human being) of the utterly useless website of an agency run by someone I know who, amazingly, managed to do very well for quite a while.

That, however, was in corporate noddy-land where you can get away with all kinds of silliness.

In the real world his copy is the highroad to failure.

Yet what is sad is he probably laboured over it - or even sadder, paid someone else as clueless as he is.

But never for a second did he ask himself,"Should this be about me - or about what's in it for my clients?"

It has 231 words, 14 of which are “we”, “us” or “our” with exactly one “you” - but of course the obligatory “innovative business solutions”.

What a pool of puke.

People who run this kind of stuff should be required to go and stand in the middle of Trafalgar Square and read it out loud through a loudhailer, because they won’t have much else to do in a hazardous 2011.

I shall be doing my best to steer people away from folly in the months ahead.

Meanwhile ...

Merry Christmas and don’t do you dare do that kind of shit in the New Year.

A bit more about phoney art

Jean Cocteau said something very apposite about this around 75 years ago.

He was talking about writing, but I believe it applies to all kinds of art: "You do not write with ideas. You write with words."

It is not enough to have a "concept" - which is just jargon for idea, used to impress the gullible. You must have the craft to make it work.

Take objets trouves.

Finding something in the street or on the beach and then displaying it is not art. It is good (or bad) taste and a piece of luck. Tracey Emin's dirty knickers are not art. They are the detritus of an imaginative slut.

Ah! The joys of religion .. Why not give these enthusiasts what they crave?

Christmas is a good time to think about what we believe in.

It's about 700 years since our lot went charging over to save Jerusalem from the Muslims, but the basic concept hasn't changed much - just the cast of characters.

A crew of loonies of Bangladeshi origin has been arrested for planning to slaughter a lot of people in the name of Allah.

And the lovely Afshan Azad who played Padma Patil (a Hindu-sounding name if ever there was one) in Harry Potter was beaten, called a slag and prostitute and threatened with death by her loving family after she met a young man who was not a Muslim.

She was too frightened to come to Manchester Crown Court for the trial of her father and brother who pretty much got away with it as a result.

People who feel that strongly about the joys of paradise should be sent to their spiritual homes, in this case I guess Bangladesh and Pakistan. Sudan sounds like fun, though - they have a permanent policy of slaughtering Christians, flogging women who wear trousers and so on.

Or maybe we could have a reciprocal arrangement whereby those who believe can experience the joys of Sharia - perhaps with Saudi Arabia, which is where most of the money to finance terror comes from.

Instead of being bound over the keep the peace in the silly old English way they could experience the bliss of something appropriately medieval that respects their beliefs.

Stoning to death? Public beheading? A hand or two amputated? A few hundred lashes in front of Manchester Town Hall? No doubt some of the preachers living here who egg these people on know the appropriate treatment.

When it absolutely, positively has to be there don't call DHL - Oh, and is Italy in Europe?

I wouldn't say I hate Christmas, but I do hate the way it has turned into a giant retail romp.

Talking of which, my beloved, who (unlike me) loves buying presents, found a lovely winter coat for her sister at the Banana Republic and paid extra for it to be delivered quickly to our office by DHL before she whizzes off to Puglia.

Being alarmingly well-organised (excellent worrier) she monitored the progress of the coat, which in the event did not arrive. A phone call to DHL resulted in a 23 minute wait and a lot of lies. The coat had gone back to Banana Republic because it was "undeliverable".

This was bollocks. We have deliveries from DHL almost every day. We have even become quite matey with the guy who brings them.

So she rang Banana Republic in the U.S.

What a contrast! The girl at the other end thought up a solution: express delivery to Bari in Puglia. No charge. An extra 15% discount for the inconvenience (the coat was discounted already).

Superb. Only slightly marred by a question at the end: "Is Italy in Europe?"

The girl deserves a raise in salary plus free geography lessons.