*DURHAMGEN FOR PM ??*

Thanks PM, will fill in a form for you to sign as my line manager!

Some u-turns are bad, of course. U-turns made on not fracking under national parks and SSIs, and on renewable energy come to mind.
Those are in this parliament, without the restraint of the Libdems.

Of course in our parliament, we are going to sort things out so well in the beginning, that we will even have the agreement of an admiring opposition.
Most of them don't really want to be Tories anyway. They didn't expect things to get this bad, and will be glad of an excuse to change direction.

Just heard that the woman who won £43,000 for being the best dressed woman at Aintree bought her dress for £7
It's not money you need, it's a sense of style

Which rules me out, so I still want some designer wellies.
On expenses.

I trust you won't be wearing them in the house. Or at least wash them before you do.

I am the minister for art and culture don't you know. I have to care for the expensive and artistic carpets.

No, no no, I will stomp in with the smell of the countryside on my boots.
I want everyone to know that I will be doing a Proper Job, not just pretending to know what a cow or sheep is.

You will have to provide those horrible blue plastic overshoes, you know, the ones they give you in some NT houses.

I do not have a budget for such fripperies. You will have to provide them out of your expenses, better still come in your stockinged feet.

Very expensive stockings (expenses?) Lots of pairs
They could get snagged on the barbed wire.

I went with my grandchildren to a swimming pool yesterday, and they had to wear those blue plastic things there, Jalima.

I thought of getting some for visitors - we have a new carpet

I went round a stately home in Germany and we had to wear big sloppy felt slippers over our shoes. So we were polishing their floors as we proceeded.!

Wilma - sorry but I've already bagged QT as I'm the Business Secretar. I'll need to look business like and now dj's banned the stylist I'll have to dress myself so I'm sorting out my best pair of leggings to go with the posh shoes. I may have a suit somewhere from pre-retirement days, too. Must I have a cleavage as I'll be on TV, do you think?

Secretary!

Better practice your spelling!

NTO we'll take turns on QT, so we'll all need to look smart. Nobody will see your leggings though because you'll be sitting down all the time. I have enough cleavage for two (or three ) so you can borrow some of mine to dazzle the men who think with their wotsits.

wot they have those giant slippers in German factories too for workers coming into the posh bits of the offices. I thought they were quaint ornaments until someone explained. It always reminded me of fairy tales for some reason!

Gott im Himmel! Shocked and amused about the slippers used in offices, Wilma. I,'ll have to ask my cousin__she does get annoyed whenever I suggest that they're slightly fanatical!!

This was less than 10 years ago wot, so it will be interesting to hear what she says - let me know.

You do get it's the factory workers coming into the offices who wear the slippers, not the office workers?

Yes, okay! She has got a sense of humour thank gaud. She,s 82 but a whirlwind of activity and an inspiration. I hope I didn't come a cross as racist. I am mostly German myself so I can't be racist.

Ha ha yes! I do wish there was a way to keep floors pristine though.

Racist? No, of course not. It never entered my mind. Those slippers did look like a brilliant way to clean the floors - especially wooden ones! Maybe they were a way to be super efficient - not just keeping the floors from getting dirty or marked, but polishing them at the same time. German efficiency for you!

I have to be careful and politically correct because I often put my foot in it ( like when I criticized "tea")

wot I've never noticed you do that.

"It’s not all hardship, though. The prime minister’s own party supports him where necessary, the returns reveal. Expenses met by the Conservative party have varied between £5,105 and £13,149, which have been declared as taxable benefits. They cover travel, clothes and other associated expenses for Cameron and his wife.

When the PM next berates Jeremy Corbyn over a shabby suit, the Labour leader will be able to reply that, unlike Cameron, he isn’t receiving a taxpayer subsidy for it."

No, we're not doing this either. No party money as taxable benefits.
We really do need to think of the people we represent.

Suitable reading material for our GN cabinet members, reviewed on Amazon.

"Over on Amazon ‘Hamilton Richardson’ is reviewing Mr Men books and the reviews are worth reading in full, clearly written by a bored parent whose mind started wandering after reading one of these books for the 19th time.

Mr. Uppity
Hargreaves: Bolshevik, or Monarchist?
In the opening few pages of this, the 11th work in the Mr Man series, we are almost led to expect of Hargreaves a foray into dialectical materialism.

We meet Mr Uppity with his top hat and monocle – a clear and overt representation of the bourgeois industrialist. Other arriviste trappings such as his long limousine and imposing townhouse further give the game away.

In a thinly-veiled reference to the oppression of the workers by the ruling class, we are told that Mr Uppity is rude to everyone, and the detail that he has no friends in Bigtown explicitly informs us that the masses are on the brink of revolution. Are we about to bear witness to class war, Hargreaves-style? To see Mr Uppity brought to account by the revolutionary power of the proletariat? Vanquished and overthrown by the party of the workers?

Not so. Mr Uppity is no Marxian analysis, no Leninist prescription for class action. As always, Hargreaves’ inherent and essential conservatism comes to bear. His critique of the bourgeoisie comes not from the proletariat but from the feudal aristocracy. It is the authority of a king that places limits upon Mr Uppity’s excesses, as his usurpation and arbitrary exercise of power has violated ‘the natural order of things’. Hence the protection the masses are dealt in response to this transgression is paternal, and they receive it as subjects not radical agents of change.

Being so staunch a traditionalist, Hargreaves of necessity is a reformer not a revolutionary. The King does not have Mr Uppity executed, imprisoned or even sent into exile. There is no state seizure and collectivization of his wealth, or in fact any redistribution at all. (Despite his pomp and grandeur, the King no longer has such powers – both the outward self-importance and ultimate weakness of his intervention appear little more than a face-saving exercise for his waning hereditary rule.)

Rather, in the end it is the mildest of all regulation that is imposed upon the capitalist class. The ownership of the means of production remains the same, with no fundamental change to the economic base – just some superstructural tinkering to rein-in any overly brutal treading on the small man. The ruling class can do pretty much as it did before, as long as it says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. The aristocracy is duly appeased.

Hence we arrive at the Britain Hargreaves lived in – a gently regulated capitalism coupled with sham aristocracy, maintained by our own collective nostalgia and a national lack of appetite for mass action."
More reviews at http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2016/03/01/literary-criticism-mr-men-reviews-made-us-laugh-lot/