Sunday, May 09, 2010

Cognitive Dissonance

On a morning when proper journalism is almost entirely replaced by spin, guesswork, what-ifs & soundbites, it's difficult to dig out from the political manure heap any nuggets. However, Paul Owen provides one with the observation he made at 11.38 this morning on the Guardian's live election blog (http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/may/09/general-election-2010-hung-parliament ):
"The deficit is a lose-lose issue: the public wants you to deal with it, but they won't thank you when the measures meant to do that affect their own jobs or taxes. Cameron will probably never be more popular than he is now -- and he's not even that popular now."
Precisely. Last week I had a conversation with an acquaintance who works in the civil service. He endorsed Cameron's aim to make deep cuts in the public sector. When I pointed out to him that this meant his job would be on the line he looked bewildered.

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