Madness

Like, I suspect, most of the country - and unlike the media and the Westminster villagers - I am not exactly consumed with passion about this 42-day business, either pro or con. As I walked the lanes of Surrey yesterday, it never so much as entered my mind. There seem to be good arguments on both sides, but the great Captain B himself can see no compelling reason for 42 days. What's more, that renowned political sage Vivienne Westwood has, I see, come out with a firm No... And so it goes on. But the talk today of £3,000 a day (!) compensation for those wrongly detained beyond 28 days - carefully stirred up by a government that has no intention of enacting any such thing - takes the whole business into the realm of sheer madness. Rather like Ed Balls yesterday defending anti-poverty measures that have simply made people poorer, or threatening to deal firmly with 'failing schools', as if they weren't the product of a failing government. Bug-eyed Balls seems to have gone mad without even getting a sniff of high office. Perhaps that is the way these days. And to think we might have two more years of this...