Nick Clegg's having a bit of a rough time of it as Dave's stand-in, whether being forced to hot-foot it from a children's centre full of angry parents, defending the coalition's emergency budget from the pasting it received at the hands of the Institute for Fiscal Studies or avoiding the alleged spat between George "The Axeman" Osborne and the self-styled quiet man of politics, Iain Duncan Smith.
When Channel 4 was launched in 1982, part of its remit was to offer challenging television. There was no mention of including a huge dollop of voyeurism. A generation on, this seems to have changed if the replacement for Big Brother - a reality show about physical disfigurement - lives down to expectations.
The power is all Nick Clegg's for a fortnight as the Camerons take a holiday - and the junior partner (is that the right description, Dave?) in the coalition got off to a rotten start in the increasingly rotten borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London.
A favourite line of Tony Allen, who helped revolutionise stand-up comedy in the 1980s, was: "I'm an agnostic. No, I go further than that; I'm a militant agnostic. I KNOW I don't know."
Last night on More 4, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins showed that he also goes further, as a militant atheist.
The UK's children are said to be among the unhappiest in the western world, at least according to Unicef. Now a study from a less grand organisation, AoC Consulting, reports that the UK is the last place on Earth that most Britons would want to retire to.
Unhappiness, from cradle to grave, guaranteed: that's not what the welfare state was supposed to be about, surely.
Has David Cameron dropped the biggest hint yet that changes are afoot for Sure Start?
Remember when the first CCTV street cameras were introduced? Up went the liberal cry of "it's 1984" even if it was, in fact, 1987.
But Flint Council has gone further with its surveillance team that follows domiciliary care workers as they drive between service users - using the boy-racer method of tailgating, by looks of it.
One of the workers is reported, in the Daily Telegraph, to have nearly crashed, so frightened was she of her pursuers.
The council denies claims of spying but does admit monitoring its home care workers to ensure quality. Perhaps it could add safety to that and then go on to think intelligently about why it feels the need to follow its employees.
A shrinking state rolled back to release a dynamic private sector. What a lovely idea (to some). Although we can be sure that the first premise will be fulfilled under this coalition, the second is looking altogether more flimsy if the profits warning from private care provider Southern Cross Healthcare proves well founded.
Some have lived in hope since day one of the coalition government that, sooner rather than later, some detail of policy will be enough to tear it apart.
Does he do it to be controversial or is it because of an outmoded, misguided sense of smug superiority that some mainstream people have over their counterparts with disabilities? We are talking about Jeremy Clarkson again.
| Outside Left questions the thinking behind today’s social policy, with a sometimes wry, occasionally cynical, always straight-talking look at the political elite that shapes it, written by sub editor, Mike McNabb. |
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