Going Native : Defending Labour's recession.

Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley has apologised for remarks he made saying a recession could be "good for us" in many ways. That's the BBC, here.

And then the Telegraph. 'David Cameron, the Conservative leader, is understood to have given his health spokesman a severe dressing down for his remarks'...' "I've been reading up on the impact of previous economic downturns on our health. "Interestingly, on many counts, recession can be good for us. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend more time at home with their families.'

I can see - just - the electoral wisdom of pretending to be not-Thatcher in a country whose schoolchildren have been brought up to think that Tories eat mummies and daddies (remember him, Chanelle, the red-head with the Liverpool tats four boyfriends ago?) and want to cancel Christmas.
But.
It's just.
Possible to point the finger of blame towards, oh, I don't know, the present government? and its economic genius of a leader who maybe, just maybe, has some small responsibility for the current economic difficulties.
Even if you decide not to do that, it is stretching the Cameroonian fair-play and all-in-it-together/no time for petty partisan differences / nation before politics in Our Hour Of Need, to actually say nice things about - whisper it - Mister Brown's recession - in such a way that the party that planned, implemented, and ran the policies that have just bankrupted our economy can blame the Tories for being heartless.

They get to say this: "There is a clear choice for the British people," said James Purnell, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions "...Labour's approach will give real help now for families and businesses to help Britain come through these difficult times stronger and sooner. The Conservatives would sit back and watch as the recession became longer and deeper."

As Dumbjon points out here, it's not about electability.

Why would someone in opposition want to say, of the government's hurtful, expensive, and utterly avoidable mess; 'This might be good for you, kids. Leave poor Mister Brown alone. Why don't you give the chap a break.' ?

I'm going to have to labour the point, I'm so angry.

To sacrifice oneself; to give up one's most precious things in order to help others is the highest standard of virtue of our civilisation; being modelled as it is on the sacrifice on the Cross.
But to take up the mantle of the recession-creators themselves and in so doing directing the world's criticism inwards at the moment when the country so badly needs to bring the government to account...Why?
Just. Why?

I mean, is it physically possible to be this stupid?
Does the IQ scale go down so low that it can measure this kind of clulessness, or will they have to invent a new gauge for it, and if so, what would they call it? The DAF Scale? The TAPS gradient?

Home.