Pssst Guv' Want A Nice Plan?

From the tenements of Glasgow to the stews of London the peoples of wherever rejoiced.  The Great Leader of Labour has spoken; at last.  Ed Miliband, cherished by all has a Ten Year Plan, of sorts.  Well, the paragraph headings but all will revealed on the new responsible Page 3 of "The Sun" in due course.

It will overturn all the doings and don'ts of the tyrannous Tories who destroyed the Ten Year Plan of 2005 of Blair and Brown.  They had abolished bust to leave a never ending boom and was on course to deliver everything that any voter wanted until fickle voters let in the capitalists by the back door.

The Tories do not usually have plans, no, they have visions or similar.  John Major had a vision in 1995 of us all having rose covered cottages filled with goodies.  He lost the election of 1997 and not long after we had the internet bust.

In 1985 Margaret Thatcher had visions, all she had to do was leave it to the wise men of The City.  That did not turn out well.  For Labour Michael Foot did have Plans but nobody believed him.

This was because in 1975 Callaghan and Healey had some wonderful plans to restore the damage done by tyrannous Tories (what again?).  Sadly, the money ran out, the IMF came in and that ended in a lot of trouble and a lost election.

In 1965 there was endless talk of plans in the Labour Government of the time.  You could not move in Whitehall for plans and if you did not have a plan you did not exist.  A couple of years later we devaluation of the pound, withdrawal from East of Suez (for a time) and a bonfire of plans.

!955 was a year when everyone talked about plans.  Attlee lost an election because his were not good enough and did not make people happy.  Even the Tories had plans.  But sadly Prime Minister Eden had a vision of the UK becoming a Great Power again.  This drowned in the Suez Canal in 1956 leaving us stuck with a lot of half baked plans that did not take account of economic changes under way.

1945 was a year when Labour won a landslide election and determined that everything possible would be planned down to the last detail.  Unluckily almost all their clever men and Whitehall were not much good at it, especially at statistics.

1935 was a year when we had men of vision, Stanley Baldwin, on the one hand thinking we could work our way out of depression with antiquated industry and Churchill relying on his vision of Empire as a back bencher.

The same two were in office in 1925 and this time there was little talk of plans but a lot of vision.  Classical economics ruled and would put all to rights for Baldwin while Churchill, as Chancellor. plumped for the gold bullion standard devised by Montague Norman, Governor of the Bank of England who was very good at making his case but not at statistics again.  We had the Crash of 1929 to remind them of the frailties of men.

1915 was a year for military plans which culminated in the Battle of the Somme.  In 1905 we dumped Splendid Isolation and cosied up to the French which got us into the War of 1914.

It is possible to go on, but enough is enough.  I am planning to have a cup of tea.  This one might actually work.