One of the (many) things that infuriated me during the election campaign was all the cant about politicians needing to have the “courage” to make “tough” choices and “painful” decisions. Er, excuse me, but who’s going to feel this much-heralded “pain”? Isn’t it the people who jobs will be terminated, students whose life-chances will be diminished, workers who will have to make do on lower pensions, teachers who will have to handle bigger classes, patients who will have to wait longer for operations, soldiers who will have to do without wearable body-armour? And besides, since when did it require courage to inflict pain on others?

And then there’s the alleged uniqueness of our new Con-Dem administration which is, we are told, the first non-wartime coalition for x hundred years. Er, are we not at “war” in Afghanistan at the moment? And what about the “war on terror”?

Yuck.