Damaged Goods

The ever-happy relationship between the Conservative Party and the Babbage computificating contraptions appears narrowly to have escaped a new and interesting twist, courtesy of Conservative standards of business acumen. Presumably under the impression that treating party members like NHS users might gain them a share of the popular sympathy inexplicably accorded to vexatious public health workers, the Conservatives connived with a failed dotcom entrepreneur, failed newspaper salesman and failed media mogul to bring about True Blue, an electronic thingummy for farming personal data and turning worn-out members into rampant consumers. As it turned out, the promise of True Blue seems to have been about as true as the tanking thinkers at Bright Blue are bright. The failed businessman met with the current failed prime minister, and an arrangement was reached whereby three-quarters of the profits from the enterprise would go to the party; whereupon the failed businessman failed again despite the project having been worked on by senior Conservative officials, with all the intellectual heft and technical aptitude that implies.