Ed Vaizey

I have already written about how newspapers spin, in the context of Greg Clark’s remarks on Polly Toynbee.  They are at it again today.  Anyone who reads Melissa Kite’s piece on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph would be convinced that he is against a gay couple bringing up children.  In fact, if he read the interview, and you know IDS, you can almost hear him speaking and completely understand what he means.  In essence, he is saying because the vast majority (ie more than 90%) of children are brought up in a family of a man and a woman, policy attention must be focused there.  In other words, the problem of welfare which penalises a married couple.  He is emphatically NOT saying that gay people should not bring up children, simply that gay families are not a large enough cohort to figure in the main debate (actually, it’s probably a compliment to the stability a gay home can bring!).  So I’m afraid Conservative Home is right, and my good friend Iain Dale is, on this very rare occasion, wrong. 

The Observer is also up to the same trick, suggesting the Tories are about to go on a moral crusade and return to back to basics.  Again, read Dominic Grieve’s interview and you will see a politician musing on the problems facing society.  He is not setting out a political programme.  Some you could agree with, some you could disagree with.  I myself am not a huge fan of Victorian Values, which involved child labour and prostitution, but there you go.

The bottom line is simply this: stop complaining that politicians behave like robots, if every time they say something thoughtful you write a screaming headline which distorts what they say or its importance.

Just to show you I am in the know, an organisation called Turquoise Frog has contaced me to tell me that, according to their “Croak of The Day”, urban kids in Britain are now saying “book” instead of “cool”, as in “that’s book, man” - because when using predictive text to send SMS messages, ‘cool’ comes up as ‘book’. Who knows, maybe they’ll even get the two confused in due course, and start reading the things.

How cool, I mean book