The British government’s Queen’s Speech will be read out today in what is becoming an increasingly ridiculous tradition in which the Queen reads out a carefully prepared script witten entirely in the bullshit dialect of management-speak.
Most of the content of the Queen’s Speech is, as usual, on devolved matters over which the Scottish Prime Minister and his British government has no moral or democratic mandate.
The Queen’s Speech is expected to include:
- A bill to legally oblige the British government to halve the budget deficit – a Canute-like instruction to the budget to halve in defiance of the laws of nature and pointless in that no parliament can bind a future parliament (Whole of UK)
- A bill to allow the FSA to ignore employment contracts and change the bonuses paid to bankers (Whole of UK but mainly affecting England)
- A bill to give English local authorities more powers to prevent floods (England only)
- A bill to give elderly English people care in their home (England only)
- A bill to tinker with the police and private security and put more people in the DNA database (Mostly England only)
- A bill to allow OFGEM to set prices gas and electicity companies can charge (Whole of UK)
- A bill to make bribery of a foreign official illegal (Whole of UK)
- A bill to make broadband internet available universally (Whole of UK, mainly benefiting Scotland and Wales)
- A bill to ban cluster bombs (Whole of UK)
- A bill to change school league tables and literacy and numeracy strategies in English schools (England only)
As much as it pains me tosay this, I have to agree with Nick Clegg-over that the Queen’s Speech is a farce and that the bill to cut the budget defecit in half is a joke. As Clagg-over says, they may as well say they’re going to pass a law to make the sun shine next Tuesday.
