I found the recent controversy regarding the racist remark made by someone on Strictly Come Dancing rather interesting. For me it highlighted the huge divide between classes in the UK. When the reality TV contestant Jade Goody made exactly the same remark she was labelled uncouth and so on. When an upper class male says the same thing it is almost laughed off. So if you say a certain word and you are from a working class background you are racist but if you say the same word and from "better stock" then there is no problem.

David Cameron has gone to that old faithful, tried and tested policy of 'benefit reform'. More affluent voters love this to be dredged up every now and again as it appeals to their prejudices. Since those sort of constituents have no experience or any idea about being on benefits, it is much more of a concept to them. So if you put more people into training then an avalanche of new jobs will appear out of nowhere and suddenly the unemployment situation will be solved. These jobs are just waiting to be filled. I might be way off and I certainly don't hold a PHD in economics but if you want to decrease unemployment wouldn't you better off trying to create more jobs? Politicians know that re-training will do very little for the short term. But it certainly makes the job stats look better.

I was so chuffed to hear Brown's emphasis on anti-social behaviour in his speech in Brighton today. It is so good to hear that the leader of a government which has presided over the highest ever inequality in wealth; a society which even in official terms is worse off than in Thatcher's years; a deficit which in real terms runs into the trillions; almost 3 million unemployed (of which I'm one and in real terms will be much higher); advocating the use of tax havens to their rich buddies; sacked 16000 staff from Jobcentres since 2004 who are now having to be re-hired because of the high unemployment; approving rules in 2004 which led to the rules on MP's expenses which has caused so much controversy; etc etc. I'm so glad that they will now be concentrating on noisy neighbours!

Ed Balls has just announced a 5% reduction in the education budget. He uses phrases such as "wage discipline" and "restraint". Why weren't these terms used when bailing out the banks which are still gorging themselves? I wonder if similar logic will be applied to London 2012, Iraq and Afghanistan? Schools are already using unqualified staff to teach so what next? I've got an idea. To start with if you scrapped OFSTED and ESTYN you would save around £15 million. Then schools would not to waste money on consultants telling them how to pass inspections. You could scrap academies which the government has recently stated they are committed to rolling out. You could scrap PFI schemes in education where there is a library full of evidence showing that these schemes cost thee taxpayer far more money than the public sector. I think any parent should be veery concerned at these worsening developments and get in touch with their local MP to demand that their children be ALWAYS taught by qualified staff and that education is too important to suffer budget costs at the same time we are building future white elephants for London 2012.