Joined-Up Government Requires Joined-Up Brain Cells

Despite my earlier post as to her muppetry, you have to love Ruth Kelly just for the entertainment value. After all, it is a rare minister who manages to make two separate statements in one day that have no appreciation of their own irony. Forgive me for failing to beat around the bush, but;

1) Ruth, you are a member of Opus Dei, an official branch of the Roman Catholic church whose aim is to support the promotion of Catholic dogma through the working lives of its members. If you truly wish to tackle extremism, you should leave this organisation and distance yourself from it forthwith. It should also be noted that you have denied that membership of Opus Dei affects your work as a minister, which means you are either lying to the electorate or lying to God.

2) Ruth, you are a member of the Labour Party, an organisation that believes that local government should operate under firm guidelines from central government and that local government should have control over almost none of its budget, with all funding coming from the centre. If you want local government to have any chance of tackling extremism, you should join a party that believes that local government should source more of its own finances and should be allowed the freedom to make its own policies and innovate. (Okay, we wouldn't let you in, but that shouldn't stop you trying...)

If there's one thing that annoys me about how we deal with the media as a party, it's that we don't offer this sort of exposition. We must start beating down the door on this sort of hypocrisy if we are to make a real impact on both the government and the electorate.