Politics - the art of the possible, indeed

I've seen Alan Johnson's ministerial assertion that he won't be U-turning on ID cards, because they were "a manifesto commitment", so I went to have a look at exactly what the manifesto said about ID cards. I had to stop after the first paragraph, though, because I couldn't take the hilarity.

"In our first term we banished [sic] the demons of ten per cent interest rates, mass unemployment, wages of £1.50 an hour, and outside toilets in our schools" - Tony Blair

So, where do we stand today?

1 - 0% interest rates (from a collapsed banking system, regulated by a government which has bailed it out at taxpayers' expense while shafting anyone who saved in the form of pensions, investments or deposits);

2 - mass unemployment (a 12-year high, at 7.2% or 2.26 million people, and rising...);

3 - (see item 2).

...

I held out great hope, then, for the truly statesmanlike goal of banning school dunnees (I mean - screw war, violent crime, drug abuse and the threat of international terrorism, let's focus on the big picture here...). To my dismay I found this from Devon:

"At the end of this programme no school will be delivering classes in temporary Horsa huts and no school will be totally dependent on outside toilets although some will keep their outside toilets to serve pupils taking part in activities outdoors."

The two-year capital programme will run from April 2009 to April 2011.

Ah well... there's a worthy ambition around which Gordon can build his next manifesto: to be the man who finally rid Britain's schools of brick shitters.