Just say 'No'

I read one of my new best friends' post on Morecambe and Lonsdale Labour MP Geraldine Smith on Saturday morning.

Here's her political bio.

She is former pupil of Morecambe High School on Dallam Avenue and Lancaster and Morecambe College on Morecambe Road in Lancaster, where she gained a Diploma in Business Studies. Her first campaign was supported by the Communication Workers Union, for whom she was formerly an officer. Prior to becoming an MP she was a Lancaster City Councillor and worked for the Royal Mail from 1980-97. She has been Labour Member of Parliament for Morecambe and Lunesdale since 1997.

For those of you not blessed with detailed ecological knowledge of Northwest England's colourful and Byzantine political life, the phrases Morecambe High School and Lancaster and Morecambe College and Lancaster City Councillor can best be defined by analogy.
That analogy is that if Simon Cowell ran a political competition called Britain's Got Morons then Geraldine Smith might - just might - get through to the final as the Scottish virgin with werewolf eyebrows and the voice of an angel. I'm saying, is all.

By coincidence, I was visiting the lovely hypodermic-paved Lancaster and Morecambe's Salt Ayre hinterland Asda superstore on Saturday.

There was La Smith in a cute little sympathy-inducing Labour-red plaster cast loooking very, very browbeaten at her 'Meet your MP' table.

Mrs. Northwester asked me if I felt sorry for her and her kind because every time these poor sods went shopping from now on someone was bound to ask 'Are you paying for that out of expenses?'

And then I thought of this.

Alistair Darling confirmed today the cost of rescuing the high street banks combined with the impact of the ­recession will almost double the nation's overdraft to £1.2 trillion within three years — that's £1.2 million million....The arithmetic of £1 trillion of debt is eye-watering. It is £16,700 for every man, woman and child in the country and would take 28.5 million years for someone on average London earnings to pay off.

And then I thought again of this.

Geraldine Smith spent £235 on picture and £185 on mirror for London flat in August 2005. Bought Bali table lamp, floor lamp and three cushions for total of £620 one month later.

I wondered whether Ms Smith had been thinking of my daughter's future prospects when she voted for all those Labour budgets and spending plans and' initiatives' and 'boosts' and 'helping the most vulnerable in society', and how she squared that with the likely consequences for Tiny Northwester and her generation: the jobs which heavily-taxed 'Big Business' will no longer create for my daughter to apply for, and the more expensive everything she will have to buy with her highly-taxed and lower wages.

I asked myself whether Ms Smith had been concerned about how much Labour's building boom bubble might hurt the economy for evermore as she voted for all those 'generous' tax credits and health service funding and all the spiffy new ministries and departmental reorganisations and community initiatives when she was browsing for mirrors and lamps and cushions.

Had selling my daughter into a life of debt slavery been worth it to keep vulnerable meat-people-carrier mums in plasma TVs and Benson and Hedges?

I thought really hard about that one.

And then I answered Mrs. Northwester's question.