Thoughts on politics and life from a liberal perspective

Sunday 20 May 2012

Cameron and Fruit Ninja-gate

I think this story about how David Cameron has been spending "crazy" amounts of time on his iPad playing "Fruit Ninja" is wrong on two levels.

Firstly I simply don't believe that he spends very much of his time playing games (and what is the definition of "crazy" in this context?). No modern Prime Minister ever really has that much spare time.

But secondly and much more importantly, even if it was true, so bloody what? It is continually lamented that our politicians do not act like normal people. What could be more normal than a middle aged man getting a little bit too into a piece of new technology? I've done it, and if you asked you'd probably find millions of people in this country had got more diverted than they probably should have done by something like this.

This week a "story" was also reported that Cameron had gone out for a meal with his wife. And ate CAKE! You might be wondering why this is even newsworthy (it isn't) but it was juxtaposed with comments from William Hague about people having to rein in their spending. Even people economising will often find a bit of money to go out for a one-off celebration of something. Again, the PM is being castigated for something that normal people do all the time.

It makes me wonder what those who deem these pieces worthy of reporting on actually expect from a political leader. Because if they want an utter obsessive who spends every waking second on politics getting very little sleep and finding pretty much no time for anything else I believe the member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath is available for a comeback.

No, I thought not, so lay off Cameron for doing the normal stuff. There's plenty of other things he can be legitimately criticised for. This nonsense is a tabloidesque distraction from properly holding him to account.

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