We Don't Need No Education

All political careers end in failure, which is yet another reason why membership of the Stupid Party can be a rather jolly thing. Very few people, if they were intelligent enough to see any significant difference between failure and success, could survive being the mad old cat lady in the Home Office for years on end; and yet the mad old cat lady in the Home Office continues to carry off the chore with aplomb. Her latest coup de bêtise is to devise a security bill which is too repressive for MI5, too reactionary for the House of Lords and too idiotic for Baroness Warsi. The basic idea is to co-opt universities (formerly known as places where occasional questions could be asked) as a sort of unpaid adjunct to Serco, and have them spy on their students to weed out those abusing the privilege of free speech by indulging in free speech. The bill goes to a vote next week, and prospects for the thought-control clause are not hopeful. The Home Office has promised to try and re-word some of it into something more resembling a statute of English law and less like a decree from the office of Kim Jong-un; which will almost certainly ruin its chances of getting any support from Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition.