Who's Queenie?

ETTL has mixed views regarding the Queen's Speech, which was (perhaps inevitably) a hodge-podge of pre-planned bills and stuff tailored to the nascent depression.

As already blogged, ETTL is broadly in flavour of the new moves to push the unemployed into work, but there are limits. Proposed lie detector tests to reduce benefit fraud are the ultimate in New Labour paranoia, and detract attention away from the pro-liberal removal of the proposed Communications Data Bill. This Stalinist horror would have created a state-controlled database of all emails and phone calls, and is now out for "further consultation". Hopefully it will never return.

On the economy there were no great surprises; Lord Mandy is said to have sifted through all twelve (down from eighteen in the draft) bills to ensure their anti-cyclical nature. Bizarrely this includes a watering down of the Health Bill, with shops still being able to display cigarettes. On the other hand the nanny state is cracking down on binge drinking by forcing a (mandatory) code of conduct on the drinks industry. Shocking.