Up Before the Beak

George the Progressively Regressive has been charged with, of all things, exaggerating the parlous state of Britain's finances for his own political advantage. The chair of the Treasury select committee, Andrew Tyrie, called Osborne's claim that Britain was on the brink of bankruptcy "a bit over the top", and even had the Trotskyite gall to state that Osborne's claims of progressivity were a bit over-egged. "Maybe the tough measures on the deficit and also the effort to make the budget fair (sic) would have come across more clearly if they hadn't been obscured in debate of claim and counter-claim," Tyrie said. "I think there is something there to look at when making these remarks, which do look to me more like the language of opposition than government." Apparently Tyrie has failed to catch up with present-day political realities, whereby the process of government consists mainly of determined opposition to the election pledges on which one was voted into office. Tyrie, a Conservative, then further betrayed his inability to share Daveybloke's Blairite vision by implying that the language of government should have something to do with "telling it as it is". Osborne defended himself by saying that Britain was involved in some unflattering acronyms with foreigners, which made for an "incredibly serious" situation, and showed his own grasp of the Blairite vision by demonstrating the argument modus Tonens, namely that a falsehood becomes true if repeated often enough and affixed to the words "I believe".