Penitent Dave

It's sad to see David Cameron indulging in the usual lefty political claptrap of apologising for the past sins of the nation, especially over Kashmir which was never going to end happily. Some people there want to be in India, some in Pakistan. Drawing that line when it came to independence was tough.

Perhaps we should try to revisit history, to imagine the events that would have unfolded in various countries had we not been there? Rollback to "Britain takes over India", remove it and play it forward. Does India now have railways or democracy?

But most of all, I don't believe that a generation should apologise for long-before generations, nor do I believe it's particularly sincere. There's a time when it's appropriate, like Willy Brandt kneeling before the Warsaw Uprising Memorial in 1970. He was apologising to people, most of whom had remembered those times, as had Brandt himself. And that was for some the actions of a regime that's hard to find much good to say about.

Very few Indians would now remember the time before Independence, and my feeling is that India is a nation looking forward, perhaps a nation that will be one of the economic giants of this century. To drag up old guilt seems unhelpful.

Childish Gesture Politics

I'm probably going to be going against the grain on this one:-

£10m savings on cutting down on first-class travel and £5m from restricting ministerial cars and drivers and getting members of the government to walk, use public transport or a pooled car. David Laws, the chief secretary to the Treasury, is the first ditch the personal car and driver he is entitled to.

The first-class travel for MPs I broadly agree with, but I'm really not sure about restricting ministerial cars. The issue strikes me as ticking 2 boxes: the public who are angry about expenses and the eco nuttters.

Because whilst I like the idea of MPs remaining grounded, the fact is that most of us don't have a billion or more of spending under our control. Are we really to expect that when Michael Gove goes off to a school in Devizes that he'll take a tube across to Paddington, a train to Swindon and buy himself a Wiltshire Rover ticket and sit on the bus there?

It's daft penny-pinching which will save something close to piss all. Closing down the DCMS or DBERR would save far more money and do far more good.