spinoff

So here's a thing. Spinoff was having a quiet half last night at the Apostate and Empiricist, our favourite little haunt (warm lager, cold beer and wine you could use as paint stripper) when in burst one of our regulars, a down at heel (but nonetheless respected) journalist, in a state of considerable dishevellment.

We sat him down, calmed his twitching body by the internal application of Mrs Saskatoon's Old Peculiar, and asked him what was wrong.

He was, it transpired, sitting casually at home, minding his own business, thinking about nothing more than where his next assignment was going to come from (and hoping it wasn't going to be Kazakhstan, again), when the news came through that Mr Howard had reshuffled his team of advisors ('shadow cabinet' seems a trifle pretentious for what Mr Howard now leads).

And that the new shadow chancellor of the exchequer is thirty three years old.

Now, there are plenty of reasons, in the opinion of the d-a-h-(b-n-r) journalist, to have a go at the Tories. However, in a party of (very) senior citizens, dominated by women with blue rinses and men with blazers with regimental or golf club bandges on the breast pocket, the complaint that they are appoinitng schoolchildren to shadow the great offices of state is somewhat unexpected.

But what really got my friends' dander up was the fact that he was ten years older than George Osbourne, the new shadow chancellor. For those who have long nurtured political ambitions (even, in the case of my friend, if they were unlikely ever to come to fruition) the fact that people seem to be coming straight from college to the Conservative Research Department to the front bench is a bit much. At the AGE OF THIRTY THREE.

I have to say, I see what he means. Have a look at this -

http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=people.person.pa....

Young people trying to look serious do look daft, don't they?

But they are, apparently, the future. The party of blue rinses is recruiting child slaves, in the mistaken impression that this will make them appear hip and groovy, and attractive to younger voters.

The fact that this is so transparent it cannot work (except amongst blue rinses, of course) makes it no less depressing for Spinoff's friend, who is ten years older than Master Osbourne. Or indeed, your humble interlocutor, who is thirty nine. Which is obviously too old to be anything other than an elder statesman these days.

We ended our day at the A&E drinking to youth - and hoping that it wasn't being wasted on the young. And that, ideally, they'd all fall flat on their perky little faces and let us middle aged hacks in with the chance we promised ourselves when we were their ages.

Yours etc,

Spinoff.