Is this thing on?

In case you missed it, I’ve got a Doctor Who related piece on the Spectator’s Arts Blog “Touching from a Distance”.

Sorry about the lack of blogging this week. Have been working – got to eat!

Due to problems with the box that this site runs on, I’m having to move it to a new box. I hope this will fix some of the problems people have noticed lately.

Until it’s all completed I can’t add new content, and for some people it may mean the site is down for up to 24 hours due to delays that can happen when you point a domain name to somewhere new.

That’s it! Budget analysis will have to wait, but needless to say I’m not impressed with the VAT increase. I’ll still be Twittering – I’m on there as @charlottegore.

The keenly observant amongst you will have noticed that this blog hasn’t had my full attention this week. There’s been work to do, not least of which because I’ve been helping set up another blog which will be launching soon – more on this soon, I hope.

Normal service shall be resumed shortly. Missed loads of interesting stories, but my favourite – in a makes-me-so-angry-I-want-to-puke sort of way was the “There’s no money left” joke note left for David Laws. Cos, hey, that’s hilarious. Yep.

I also want to get stuck into the Labour Leadership contest to discover what non-Labourites need to know about Next Labour. I’m still convinced we’re going to see a much more aggressively anti-immigration, anti-EU, anti-Market Labour Party which will attempt to rebuild that core vote. Is David Miliband the right man for that job? I don’t think so.

In other news we got the full Programme For Government published, which needs some picking over. That probably won’t happen on this blog – I’ve never been a policy wonk and I don’t intend to start now – but did I mention there’s another blog starting up? Perhaps that’ll be of help. Who knows?

A quick one this: It’s pretty obvious that this next Government needs to do some pretty brutal things in order to get the public books back into some semblance of sanity. The Tories, of course, needed to ‘decontaminate’ their brand because of the hatred they inspired in so many the last time they engaged in a similar exercise with the public finances. Do they really want to come back into power after 13 years away to deliver the sort of ‘savage’ cuts necessary?

I suspect they don’t. A Coalition Government gives the impression that they’re acting in the national interest, not party interest. “If it’s okay by the Lib Dems, it can’t be that bad, can it? It must be necessary, right?”

We’ll see if the Lib Dems make a big enough crowd for the Tories to hide safely in.