None so blind...

Dear me, the students have decided to demonstrate and some have created a riot outside Millbank House. Predictable, I am sure, but misguided.

There are of course, many issues here, some about the students themselves, which they might not like to have too closely examined. The vexed question, e.g., of how many of the students ought to be students at all? How many of them ought rather to be doing jobs and maybe planning to do university courses at some time later in life? And related questions about who created so many new colleges and universities, who benefitted from that process ? Who used the creation of a larger student class with its handy side-effect of keeping young people off the unemployment register? And who found it helpful that the process concealed how many UK jobs were vanishing in the past two decades?

Still, the protests are misguided.
Again and again I hear the cry, "The Lib-Dems promised..." Well, yes they did. Before the General Election they promised in their manifesto: if you elect us this is what we pledge to do... Only, the people didn't elect them. Not enough folk voted for them, so they aren't the government, and they can't do what they promised. The fault is not with Nick Clegg, but with the voters whom failed to support him. It is simply idle of folk to say 'you promised if we elected you....' then demand the promises even when they fail to elect you.

For they didn't elect a Liberal-Democrat government. They dithered about and elected a collection of MPs who could do nothing but make a coalition: and that is not the same. That General election changed the game altogether, and no one has any right to complain at politicians - of whatever party - for not keeping election pledges. Whatever you might like to think, they are history, consigned there by the Voters themselves.

The public ought rather to be surprised that any politicians are still trying to keep election pledges at all. They have no right to expect more. And they have only themselves to blame. But there are none so blind as those who will not see.

Hey Ho! At least those of us who don't mind coalition government aren't surprised.