First impressions on the Queen's speech

I haven't actually seen the Queen's speech yet, so this commentary is based on the web reports of the new bills.

The speech is supposed to be the agenda for the next year setting out Gordon Brown's vision for Great Britain. Unfortunately Gordon Brown's innovation of pre-announcing the legislative agenda for the next year before the summer takes away any real element of surprise.

So what have we learnt?

1) School/training leaving age to be raised to 17 in 2013 and 18 in 2015. This is possibly a good idea, taking the Neets (what an awful phrase) - Not in Education, Employement or Training - out of the system and hopefully providing them with the facilities to make their lives more worthwhile. But I have a suspicion that it will not make much difference, how are the Government going to support this? They have been hopeless at getting kids not to play truant. It will be very difficult for the teachers to manage unruly young adults who are only there to keep some kind of income.

2) Some tougher security measures. It's good that they are able to continue questioning suspects after being charged, but - still - phone tap evidence will not available in court. The Government haven't yet stated what number of days they would like to see suspects detained before being charged, but when they do they'll have a struggle getting it through the Commons.

3) Nuclear power back? Maybe they will start building some more after the never ending consultation!

4) 3 million new homes. It feels like this has been peddled since the beginning of time.

5) Climate change, a 60% in CO2 decrease by 2050. Great, I support that. But it is so far in the future - how are we going to get there?

So, not much new then really. If this is the 'change' that GB mentioned when he was on the steps of number 10 then he needs a dictionary. If this is the 'vision' then I think he could do with eating some more carrots!

Squiffy.