Cameron in California

Now I am sure that this 30 minute long talk by David Cameron will have absolutely no relevance towards any of you. But this is the most ideologically inspired, hip hop and happening, new age speech I have ever heard him deliver. He and his speech writers are certainly on the ball with this one. They appear to have adopted the language and ideals of the most recent sociological/political/management trend of ‘bottom up’ systems and ‘mass collaboration’, the sort of junk that my book shelf (and bizarrely my ipod) are full of.

He even throws up a few ideas that I have never heard him talk about when addressing the British electorate (in this he is addressing the Zeitgeist conference run by Google – an event where the movers and shakers of Silicon Valley get together to congratulate themselves on being so brilliant). Stuff like a website where all central and local government expenditure can be viewed and a (comparatively) intelligent argument for increased corporate responsibility programs (e.g. if government scales back then you guys need to scale up).

Ok, so it is far from an intellectual tour de force or anything and he still talks with that irritating primary school teacher mannerism, but it is refreshing to hear him talk to people he believes can handle ideas beyond ‘immigrants are bad’ and ‘lower taxes are good’.

I had no idea until now just how much he talks down to us. Damn Oxford types.