Voting for Change (and a Tub of Lard)
I spent yesterday following David Cameron around on his one day visit. As we pulled in to Ulster carpets in Portadown I felt a strange sense of nostalgia. I used to spend so much of my summer on the Garvaghy Road, but haven't been back there for a few years.
Enroute to Portadown on the M1 I noticed that eager Conservative and Unionist supporters had parked large mobile billboards with their "Vote for Change" message on a couple of bridges over the motorway. Presumably they hoped the leader would spot them on his way to the factory. It made me think fleetingly of the supposedly erected in Rusia to impress the empress as she swept by.
Has the UCUNF got that "Vote For Change" slogan under copyright? If so I think they should sue Sinn Fein, who are using exactly the same headline on their latest North Belfast bulletin.
After Portadown it was on to Ballymena and Cameron's town hall meeting. Although there were a couple of pointed questions about the untrustworthiness of past Conservative governments, the potential Pm performed smoothly fielding enquiries about academic selection, victims, the Presbyterian Mutual Society (he thinks Gordon Brown should consider again whether to help their troubled savers) and flouridation.
One exchange which struck me came when a lady in the audience took the Tory leader to task over on "Have I Got News For You" about murdering Miss California.
David Cameron said the episode illustrated the dangers of politicians trying to make jokes, and he urged his colleagues to be cautious about accepting invitations from "Have I Got News For You" even if they risked the fate of Roy Hattersley, who was infamously replaced on the show by a tub of lard. He noted that the only politician to make a success of the satirical series had been Boris Johnson "and Boris is not quite like the rest of us."
I'm 
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