Buffoon Osborne appoints “think-alike clone” to give new ideas

As the hopeless Tories recoil from their drubbing in the latest set of by-elections, our worthless, part-time, work-experience chancellor has had a brilliant idea for restoring the Tories fortunes – he is appointing Neil O’Brien from the Think Tank Policy Exchange as a special adviser. Lucky Neil O’Brien – getting a nice taxpayer-funded government job.�Neil O’Brien may be a thoroughly nice chap, but he is a Westminster insider and the chances of someone like him coming up with radical new ideas are (IMHO) about as likely as me becoming the next prime minister.

I admit I have a bone to pick. Before the last election, I was invited to a dinner in London with such luminaries as Charles Moore from the Torygraph, Lord Wolfson, Claire Perry (one of Osborne’s advisers and now a Tory MP) and Neil O’Brien. The aim was to discuss new ideas for the Tories should they win the 2010 election. The food was average, the new ideas were completely non-existent with the attendees churning out the same old tired bollocks about less regulation and cutting red tape and other similar equally non-earth-shattering proposals.

However, at the dinner Claire Perry invited me to a meeting at Westminster to supposedly discuss some of my ideas for curing bankrupt Britain. I thought this could be my big chance – the opportunity for an outsider (not a Westminster clone) to give some input. Here I could propose thimgs like�putting all central government departments on a 4-day week and all administrative quangos (like the pointless Equalities and Human Rights Commission) on a 3-day week saving �100m a week: abolishing Corporation Tax and replacing it by a retention of VAT so companies couldn’t use lots of tricks to avoid paying; no council housing for anyone under 25 years old: child benefit only for the first 2 children: a maximum public-sector pension of average wage (about �25,000 a year): immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan: slashing foreign aid as over 90% is lost through incompetence and corruption: and why such changes should be put through immediately after the election to get the maximum benefit.

But from what I remember of the meeting with Claire Perry, she used much of the time broadcasting how intelligent she was. Well, we see the results of Mr Osborne’s and Ms Perry’s genius now – government debt that is out of control and can never be repaid, falling tax revenues, rising public-sector spending and a certain win for the lying scumbags (IMHO) Ed Miliband and Ed Balls at the 2015 election. I rather doubt Westminster insider Neil O’Brien will do much to change that, though he will bag himself a well-paid, taxpayer-funded job for a couple of years, so he’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.