Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody

Tamzin Lightwater

Wednesday, 9th September 2009

Tamzin Lightwater's unique take on the week

Monday

List of conference ‘Banned Persons’ growing by the minute. DD, Bercow and Duncan obviously. (DD a total liability, in complete Guns & Ammo overdrive and would probably descend on Manchester in full combat gear with a branch on his head if we let him.) Mr Redwood has agreed to an amnesty if we let him do one fringe event, not v mysteriously titled ‘50 spending cuts for a brighter Britain!’ Mr Vaizey has signed a licence permitting him to attend if he refrains from uttering the words ‘BBC’ and ‘privatise’. Now we just need to get Mr Letwin and Mr Willetts to sign the restraining order forbidding them from going within 80 yards of each other. The last thing we need is people seeing them having one of their little ‘discussions’ about how detailed exactly the manifesto should be and whether it’s a blueprint or a game plan.

Tuesday

Mr Hague’s Lisbon crisis getting worse. Jed says we may need to bring in The Decision Makers. This is a super team of top people from industry, mainly Google, who step in when we’re having a spot of bother and facilitate something called decision-making. Jed says that now that we are officially preparing for government, and not just preparing for preparing for government, we need to start taking actual decisions, not pretend ones. And that is not something that comes easy after all these years, let me tell you!

Poor Mr Hague is finding it particularly difficult, as he has a huge natural talent for pretend decision-making which is almost impossible to suppress. It’s pitiful listening to him in the Tranquillity Room: ‘Yes we WILL offer a rrrrrrrreferedum! No, wait a minute. What if the Irish say yes? Er-hem. No! We WON’T offer a rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreferendum! But that won’t do. Oh deary me. Hmmmm.’

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