What’s the hardest job in the world? Manager of Manchester United? Culture Minister for Australia?? Head of tourism in Syria? PR agent for traffic wardens? Chief of morality at Chelsea Football Club?? What is it?

How about the job of making people think that Ed Milliband isn’t weird? Wow. That’s hard. And that’s the undertaking of David Axelrod, formerly head electioneer for Barak Obama, now tasked with the same job for New Labour and Ed. And number on his list: make Ed seem un-wierd. Easy as making air seem un-breathable. As making Kim Jong Un the poster-boy for free expression.

In fact for the general elections next year we have 3 imported ‘consultants’ charged with making the unelectable seem worthy. With making the voting public like objectionable losers.

We have a South African in charge of the LibDems. And good luck to him. We have our Aussie chap working on the Conseravtives and now its Axelrod the Yank for the Labourites.

My first thought about this entire practice is that if our leaders need to be turned into someone else before we’d be prepared to vote for them, then they’re not very good leaders to start with. And then why don’t we just get those someone else’s as leaders in the beginning? And in ‘changing the public’s perception’ of these party leaders, that is basically election speak for lying, cheating and fasle representation. The famous ‘pig in lipstick’ but taken well beyond the mere lipstick stage and up to the point where you make these people into seeming like something they’re patently not. Which is dishonest. And therefore not the best way to start getting people to trust you enough to vote you into a very powerful position indeed.

Whereas the head of the RMT trade union is also an elected post (though you probably only need 4% of the members to achieve a 51% majority because this is trade unions, not advanced maths) and Bob Crow died and there’s three really nice chaps eager to take that role. They also employ image consutants, but to make them look more horrible, more tough, more nasty, vicious, greedy and dirty. And unless talks this weekend bear fruit, the tube trains are going on strike on Monday night for 2 days, then again the following week for 3 days.

I believe in trade unions. I believe in the rights of the working man so that he’s not exploited. Unless he works for me. But I don’t believe in anyone’s right to bring London to a virtual stand-still, to cost the city millions and millions in lost productivity and to make my journey to work more difficult than it already is. Over an issue that will cost the union no jobs and no pay loss.

We should train up all our Bulgarians and Romanians recent arrivals as train operators. How long could it take? They learn quickly. It takes them 3 days to become a proficient pick-pocket so driving a train should be easy. And then just tell the union men not to bother coming back to work after their ‘days off’. What’s Rumanian for ‘mind the gap’??

Happy saturday

A xxxx