Labour fiddles while Tories torch Britain

OK let's set a few things straight. First, Harriet - or "Hattie" as she apparently likes to be called - Harman wouldn't know a joke if it bit her on the posterior despite the fawning tittering at the recent Labour love-in.

A quick word of advice, no politician of any stripe should EVER attempt to make a joke about bondage - it's just creepy.

Second, Ed Miliband is not the anointed successor to Nye Bevan just because he struts around a stage preening and playing to the gallery.

If anything he's the second coming of Cameron or Blair - the two are pretty much interchangeable - all rhetoric, ingratiating charm and soundbites but no policies.

What did he actually say in his universally acclaimed speech to the party faithful other than that his kid likes dinosaurs and Tories are bad?

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Sod all.

All kids love dinosaurs it's hard-wired in their DNA like an addiction to sugar and the life and death need for whatever overpriced piece of tat is popular this week.

And everyone knows the Tories are bastards.

Hardly radical comments to make at a Labour knees-up.

The "one nation" mantra repeatedly regurgitated by Miliband and then subsequently by every other Labour figure to scale the podium in a sort of Pavlovian procession could mean anything.

The Labour leader used the phrase over 40 times during the course of his oration but not once did he elaborate as to what he meant by it.

Like Cameron's "Big Society" it is a meaningless term which someone thought sounded good.

He might as well have said "Magic Kingdom" or "Pixie Land."

Unless of course he meant that England will be ONE nation after Scotland and Wales devolve...

Speaking of bizarre concepts, while the nation's media has been focused on Manchester the dark denizens of the coalition have been beavering away behind the scenes.

Yesterday the first example of the Olympic legacy was announced in all it's glory and it turns out its got a half life of about 5,000 years.

Yes, fresh from basking in the ill-gotten plaudits surrounding the London games, the coalition has apparently begun the job of rewarding its partners in crime, er, I mean sponsors, with lucrative new contracts.

G4S might have to wait a bit but not so the other guilty parties.

Now, what's the first thing that comes into your head when you hear the phrase Nuclear Decommissioning Authority?

Well, if you're a Tory apparently it's Atos!

Having done such a good job of hounding the disabled to their deaths, stripping them of their benefits and forcing them back to work it's now been handed responsibility for a programme that could wipe out the rest of the population.

The five-year £140 million contract will see Atos operate IT systems at Sellafield, Magnox, National Nuclear Laboratories and the Low Level Waste Repository.

Well, let's face it there've never been any problems at Sellafield have there? What could possibly go wrong... apart from nuclear armageddon that is.

Atos has, you may recall, a somewhat chequered history when it comes to government contracts.

In 2008 the firm was embroiled in a major scandal and subject to a government inquiry after a memory stick containing passwords and usernames for a major Department of Work and Pensions computer system was left lying around in a car park.

As if that wasn't reassuring enough, in June this year the CEO of the UK Border Agency revealed that Atos was responsible for major disruptions in the Agency's IT systems over the previous months, causing "significant delays and hardship" for those applying for in-country visas.

Have they no shame? Everyone knows that causing hardship and suffering is UKBA's job. If they outsourced that side of things there'd be nothing left for them to do. They've already farmed out the brutality to G4S.

Giving Atos responsibility for the country's nuclear estate is like pointing Eric Pickles towards an all you can eat buffet-carnage will ensue and sooner or later something will explode.

Sleep well.