Littlejohn on Miliband. The Slop Bucket Kid for PM? The boy's a fool!

Littlejohn on Miliband


31st July 2008

A couple of years ago, I was introduced to the then Environment
Secretary David Miliband at a reception. He pumped my hand and invited
me to visit his office for a drink.

Why would I want to do that? Miliband explained that he would
appreciate the opportunity to convince me I had got it all wrong over
AWCs.

I had no idea what he was talking about. Wasn't an AWC some kind of
early warning missile defence shield? And if so, what had it got to do
with the Department of the Environment?
David Miliband

Intellectual threat: Foreign Secretary David Miliband gave an
interview that was seen as a clear challenge to the leadership of
Gordon Brown

I was well wide of the mark. In Labour's La-La Land, AWC stands for
Alternate Weekly Collections. The penny dropped.

'Oh, I get it. You mean not emptying the dustbins?' Far from it, said
Miliband. We are emptying the dustbins, just once a fortnight instead
of once a week.

More from Richard Littlejohn.. .

If only I could spare him half an hour of my time, he could convince
me this was a brilliant, efficient way of saving the planet.

As he droned on, promising that he could support his case with hard
evidence, I lost the will to live. This boy's a fool, as Eric
Morecambe used to say.

Out here in the real world, scrapping weekly collections has proved to
be a disaster.

Just as some of us predicted, it's led to overflowing bins; plagues of
rats, mice, flies and foxes; public health hazards; and spawned a
vast, fascistic bureaucracy dedicated to snooping and issuing fines.

Every week, often several times a week, the Mail carries yet another
horror story about the latest hapless victims of the dustbin nazis.

If any political party had actually stood for election promising to
slash refuse collections, while at the same time doubling council tax
and turning decent, law-abiding householders into criminals, it would
have lost its deposit in every constituency in Britain.

But once his feet were under the table at Environment, this hated
initiative became Miliband's flagship programme.

Indeed, it is just about the only significant contribution of his
brief ministerial career.

At one stage, so taken was he with his own genius, that he even
suggested we all buy a slop bucket for our leftovers. I can remember
asking at the time: why stop there?

Why not force every home to keep a pot-bellied pig in the kitchen?
Pigs will eat anything and thus, if all our household waste was fed to
them, we could abolish refuse collections altogether and the polar
bears would live happily ever after.

In all the coverage of Miliband's brazen attempt to become our next
Prime Minister, I have read no mention of any of this insanity. Having
introduced this ludicrous policy, he simply walked away from the
carnage into the Foreign Office, leaving the rest of us - literally
- to sweep up behind him. Fortunately, this column has a slightly
longer memory.

Yet, incredibly, this other-worldy wonker is now being touted for the
highest office in the land.

I've never understood why the Westminster Village Idiots take
politicians at their own estimation - which is probably why I ended
up as a song and dance man, instead of a revered political commentator.

Frankly, I can think of no politician of Miliband's generation
less suited to becoming Prime Minister - unless you
count his kid brother Ed, New Labour's Private Pike.

Miliband Major is living proof that anyone who wants the job so
desperately should be disqualified from getting it. Just look at the
train wreck which is Gordon Brown.

The Boy David was raised in a North London socialist hothouse, crammed
with 'intellectuals' - which helps explain everything.

You have to be really clever to invent something so stupid as
scrapping weekly refuse collections. These people deal in theory, not
reality.

His glittering career has taken him from studying politics at
university, through working as a policy researcher to running the
policy unit at No 10, before being parachuted into a safe seat in one
of Labour's rotten boroughs in Geordieland.

He's never had a proper job in his life.

Yet all this 'policy' experience didn't prevent him coming up with one
of the most unpopular, unworkable policies ever introduced by any
government.

That's because he only ever meets people like himself - insular,
selfregarding obsessives who live and breathe politics and have little
or no interaction with the people they purport to represent. It's
life, Jim, but not as we know it.

He should be spending the holidays on a beach somewhere, with his wife
and kids, not writing self-serving drivel in The Guardian, making
speeches and touring the radio and TV studios.

Perhaps he's worried that if he does venture out of the bubble,
someone might recognise him and tip a slop bucket over his head.

Let me assure him, here in the real world no one, but no
one, is saying: 'What we want is David Miliband.' Most people have no
idea who he is, otherwise they would pelt him with rotten food from
their overflowing dustbins every time he dared show his face in public.

So give it a rest, old son. Get a life.

http://www.dailymai l.co.uk/news/ article-1040306/ The-Slop- Bucket-Kid- PM-The-boys- fool.html