Parma Violet Tea

Just a note about the resignation of GB yesterday. I found the whole thing terribly moving. I really do think we have lost a man of innate decency. I liked how he admitted his discomfort with the pomp, status and ceremony that accompanied the job, and how he was only interested in the role's 'capacity for doing good.' I think Clegg and Cameron (Cleggward) would both do well to adopt some of GB's humility, and his ability to acknowledge his failings. Humility is an under-appreciated quality, so much more attractive than Cleggward's sanctimonious hubris. If only GB had been so erudite, warm and human during the election campaign.

By the time GB was speaking about Sarah and his boys I found myself weeping buckets. That line about how being PM was only his 'second most important job' (second to being a husband and father) was just beautiful. I hope and pray it wasn't written by one of Alistair Campbell's cynical focus groups! And, then his precious boys came out - those boys who have never once been used for political point-scoring, unlike the Cameron's children, who are forever being filmed eating their Cheerios and brushing their teeth.

I do believe that GB was only ever motivated by a desire to serve and a desire to make Britain a fairer place. I know he has spoken of his aspirations to find a new career in the charitable sector. I hope he does that, I can't imagine him going down the tawdry, self-aggrandizing Tony Blair lecture-tour route. I think he has more integrity than that.

It was a depressing thing though, to wake up to a Tory government again. I think that working in the public sector, as a teacher, I am going to feel the changes very acutely. We are all facing £6 billion pounds worth of cuts to public services: schools, hospitals, social care. It is a worry. I was motivated to join the Labour party last night, but then had a rethink. I am not sure I can afford the fees!

I've just been watching Cleggward's first press conference. What with the bucolic, rose-garden setting and the the beaming smiles of the two loved-up protagonists there was more than a whiff of gay wedding (minus the release of 100 white doves). Their jolly japes and cheery banter was vomitrociously cheesy. It made me long for a bit of Gordon's terse grouchiness, as dour and dreich as a November Sunday. How long till the Cleggward divorce, I wonder?

My favourite quote of the day though came from India Knight's Twitter page, about John Snow's interview with David Cameron.

'Snow making Clegg sound like a guinea-pig. Where will you put him? What will he eat? What about holidays?'