The latest person to jump on the anti-government bandwagon is the former Conservative Prime Minister, Sir John Major. In a television interview shown earlier today, he accused the government of presiding over ten years of “systematic sleaze“.

Speaking on the BBC, he slammed the government for being…”institutionally careless” and called for his successor Tony Blair to publically apologise for leading what he described as a “McCarthyite” campaign against the Conservatives in the early 1990s.

Many people may agree with his comments….. except that the administration he led after succeeding the discredited Lady Thatcher in 1990 was just as bad then as Labour’s is today.

He also gave a warning that the so-called “successful economy” that Labour inherited from the Conservatives in 1997 is about to implode….yeah, right, that is sound advice from the man who ordered the privatisation of Britain’s railway network…. and the country is still paying the price for it…..

Another re-heated education policy has been put forward by the government in a desperate bid to counter increasing criticism over their policies.

The Children’s Plan, launched yesterday by ministers, is a £1billion 10-year strategy for education, welfare and play. Some of the significant parts of the plan include changes to the primary school cirriculum, and the ending of the hated SATS testing within two years. It also proposes spending on new and refurbishing playgrounds across the country and giving parents greater information about their childrens’ education.

Childrens’ secretary Ed Balls said that the mission was to make Britain “the best place in the world to grow up”.

Oh, come on, Mr Balls, do you so seriously think that this “plan” will help improve the education of our children? Parents, teachers and independent experts will look at this announcement and breathe a collective groan. There has been so many education initiatives from the government over the last ten years, but almost every respected independent reports show that our pupils are falling behind most of their equivalents in the industrialised world. Our schools are suffering from the dead weight of bureaucracy. Our children are being routinely tested to destruction.

The government has continued its top-down approach to delivering education…. and to most people, it stinks.

With the rising tide of crime, and the mountains of paperwork they have to deal with, police officers have in the past had to either like it or lump it. But it was the recent decision by the government not to backdate a 2.5 per cent “pay rise” that really got them angry.

Now the Police Federation, the union that represents the rank-and-file, has proposed balloting all officers whether they want the right to strike. At present, the police cannot take industrial action because of the leglislation in the Police Act 1996, but that may be about to change…

The government is said to be resisting any moves to allow the police to strike. Who is going to cover law and order while they “down tools”? The Army? Private security firms? The fact is that the police is like any other public service and they should be treated accordingly. Personally, I believe that all those who work in essential services should be allowed to fight for better pay and working conditions.

Mind you, with law and order virtually non-existent in today’s Britain, if officers do go on strike, most people wouldn’t notice any difference in crime levels anyway.