The disadvantage of live phone-in radio programmes is precisely that you don’t get to weigh your words. No doubt Nick Clegg would have expressed himself a bit differently on the subject of a transferable married couple’s tax allowance if he hadn’t had the subject thrown at him by a caller. But in response to a question on the issue, he said:
‘The more people will look at this, the more they will think… why should you be giving, whatever it is, £3 a week to married couples?’ Naturally, people took this as indicative of just how out of touch the ruling elite is from everyone else… three pounds a week? Pah! And you know what? I think they’re right.
Julius Caesar declared that he wanted men around him who were fat. In the case of government ministers precisely the opposite is true…they need men around them who are just a bit lean (or, I suppose, obese, if Anna Soubry is right that the poor are fat).
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