"The Liberal Democrats privately expressed surprise..."

That sentence comes from this Guardian article  which reports on the, wait a minute, let me find the right words, supremely idiotic, inappropriate, insensitive idea from Michael Gove that we should spend £60 million of our hard earned taxes into a new yacht for the Queen to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, and how we should push the boat out (sorry) on celebrations to cheer us all up a bit.

Well, I'm sure all these people who are losing their jobs, or the disabled people whose benefits are being cut, would be delighted to see that.

Surprise?

Is that really all?

I really hope that that was code for "The Liberal Democrats told Michael Gove to go away and boil his head."

And it seems from Nick Clegg's reaction that that is pretty much what we did do. Again the Guardian reports that he said:

 "I suspect more people in the country would think, given there's very little money around, that this isn't top of their list of priorities for the use of scarce resources."

This whole saga is almost like a joke in some ways. Surely to goodness a Cabinet Minister couldn't have meant that as a serious proposal. Was the whole episode just cooked up to give us all something to be outraged about.

If we want something real to be annoyed about, we might want to read Spartacus Stories. This new blog is a follow up to the Spartacus report I wrote about last week. This casts doubt over the rationale behind the Government's proposals to reform Disability Living Allowance by cutting it by 20% by 2015.  Peers vote on these measure this week.

The Guardian (again) reports that Nick Clegg and others have been trying to do something about the Benefit cap which is also up for debate in the Lords this week. While this is to be welcomed, I would like to have seen our people do more to fight against the cuts in sickness benefits.

Peers should expect to be questioned on their decisions at Party Conference in March. Some good people voted with the Government on these changes and I want to hear their reasons for choosing to vote with the Government rather than with the policy decided by Conference.