MAIL COMMENT: Mixed messages that make matters worse

13 April 2012

Careless talk: Alistair Darling

Forwards! Backwards! Sideways! As you were!

In the depths of this economic crisis, Ministers seem utterly confused. After a weekend of political incoherence, is there anyone who has the faintest idea what the Government thinks or how it proposes to protect our living standards?

The farce began with Alistair Darling's astonishing claim that our problems 'are arguably the worst they've been in 60 years'. So instead of talking our economy up - as Chancellors traditionally do in times of trouble - he talked it down, undermining confidence even further.

Some might see it as an act of belated honesty, but livelihoods are at stake. Careless talk can cost jobs. So what did Mr Darling think he was playing at?

Yes, our problems are huge, but hasn't Britain been through much worse in recent years, from the way his Labour predecessor Denis Healey had to go cap in hand to the IMF in 1976 to Black Wednesday in 1992?

Unless Mr Darling knows of some bad news that hasn't yet emerged, his comments seem over the top. As to why, we can only guess. Trying to distance himself from Gordon Brown perhaps? Could that be why he admitted (in this case quite accurately) that voters are 'p*****d off' with Labour?

Whatever his motives, his show of independence didn't last long. Within hours, under orders from Downing Street, the Chancellor was trailing round broadcasting studios claiming that he didn't quite mean what he had said.

No, in a toe-curling piece of spin, the hapless Mr Darling insisted he had been talking about world-wide problems caused by the credit crunch and rising prices, not just about the situation in Britain.

Yet we now have a chilling warning from the Home Office that a crumbling economy will have devastating consequences for this country. A leak from the department says that increased social strains will lead to more crime while cost constraints will mean fewer police.

More community tensions... a surge in the black economy... more smuggling... a greater likelihood of terror attack... the outlook is grim. And this is just one Whitehall department. Presumably other ministries are just as pessimistic.

The pity is that the public doesn't know what to believe or who to trust. Instead of offering a firm hand on the tiller, these conflicting messages make a bad situation worse. The Government must do better.

Rank ingratitude

For it's Tommy this an' Tommy that an' Chuck him out, the brute/ But it's Saviour of his Country when the guns begin to shoot...

Not much has changed, it seems, in the 118 years since Rudyard Kipling wrote those caustic words about the treatment of soldiers in the British Army.

By any standards, former Gurkha captain Lalit Bahadur Gurung deserves our gratitude. He joined up on his 18th birthday and served for 24 years in some highly dangerous postings. In 1964 he was awarded the Military Cross (presented by Prince Philip) for saving his comrades from a rebel ambush in Indonesia.

And now the country for which he risked his life is turning its back on him.

Mr Gurung, who is 81, half paralysed and at risk of blindness and heart failure, desperately needs medical treatment in Britain. But he can't afford £500 for a visa. And because he is not officially classified as 'destitute', our jobsworth officials in Nepal refuse to waive the usual fee.

One day, maybe, a judicial review may allow this frail old soldier access to the help he needs. How shaming that officialdom seems incapable of ordinary decency unless a court gives the order.

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