I’m fed up with politicians playing the blame game

Thing number one: Holly, a nine-year-old Border Collie who makes sure I get some early morning exercise.

Thing two: a radio.

Most mornings Holly and I play what, for the purposes of this exercise, I will call “Political Bingo” although she knows it by another name more closely related to the farmyards we are passing!

The essence of the game is to see how long it takes a politician to blame someone of a previous government or another party for whatever is failing under their watch.

This week has been full of it. Clearly everything that has gone wrong in the NHS is the fault of the previous government!

Holly and I counted just two sentences before the minister being interviewed on the radio hit us with that nugget.

In Nelson, some sections of the community are reeling from the fact 100 jobs are to go at what I still call “The Archives”.

Pendle MP Andrew Stephenson was quick to attach blame for that decision to the previous government.

The current government is in its fourth year in office.

And yet everything is still the fault of the previous Labour administration.

Don’t get me wrong, Messers Brown and Blair and their cohorts were quite good at it, too.

I might take a simplistic view of politics.

But it is this view: If you don’t like what the previous government did, get on and deal with it. It is what you are there for. Take the credit for sorting it out instead of shovelling the blame elsewhere.

The blame culture among politicians boils down to the fact every single political party should have a simple manifesto.

It should say firstly that they need voting into office to spend five years tidying up the mess of the previous lot.

And then ask for five more years to do some new things of their own.

But back to Political Bingo! Somehow, no one from the government has found a way to blame their predecessors for the horsemeat scandal.

Surely some mistake!