Having used the neat alliterative phrase ‘decade of debt’ early in his reply to Mr Darling’s Budget speech on Wednesday, David Cameron returned to it in the second part of a contrast as he began to wind up his reply.
He then followed it up with another contrast between the last Labour government and this one, a repetitively constructed three-part list and a question – technically* pretty faultless, and hardly surprising that he was rewarded with a good deal of positive media coverage.
CAMERON:
[A] The last Labour government gave us the Winter of Discontent.
[B] This Labour Government has given us the Decade of Debt.
[A] The last Labour Government left the dead unburied.
[B] This one leaves the debts unpaid.
[1] They sit there, running out of money,
[2] running out of moral authority,
[3] running out of time.
[Q] And you have to ask yourself what on earth is the point of another fourteen months of this Government of the living dead?
(* More on these rhetorical techniques and how to use them can be found in my books Lend Me Your Ears and Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy).
Gordon Brown seems to agree that Labour is ‘savage’ and ‘inhuman’
Unless nodding your head has come to mean something other than expressing agreement with the person you’re listening to, there was an extraordinary sequence in David Cameron’s reply to the Budget speech on Wednesday in which the Gordon Brown was to be seen to nodding quite cheerfully on being told his government is ‘savage’ and ‘inhuman’:
Poems for St George's Day
A few years ago, we had a St George's Day supper in the village pub, where part of the evening's entertainment involved giving people the first line of a limerick for them to complete.
The results included the following:
A bard from Stratford called Will
Never had enough strength in his quill.
He asked for Viagra,
But never could find her.
Forsooth Will, it's only a pill.
A bard from Stratford called Will
Drank some whiskey that made him quite ill.
Those three Scottish witches
Made him sick to the breeches.
Now he drinks Gin from a good English still.
Upon the road to Priddy Fair,
I met a maid with golden hair.
We argued all night
As to who had the right
To do what with whom and where.
There once was an English rose
With a large and roseate nose.
But it wasn't much fun
When the cold made it run,
And the drips that fell from it froze.
When Henry fought at Agincourt,
He found himself ten archers short.
"I must have the barrows
With plenty of arrows,
Or this battle will all come to nought."
P.S. Since posting these I've had an email with a rather more topical post-Budget theme:
A Scotsman called Gordon McBrown
Made the English grimace and frown
By taxing their wealth
With cunning and stealth.
But they noticed and voted him down.
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