Jam - past, present, future

John Maynard Keynes was schooled at Eton College, where I'm sure he was forced to study Classics. Most likely, then, he understood the origin and meaning of the phrase 'jam tomorrow', when he used it to criticise governments that are obsessed with saving money 'for a better tomorrow', at the expense of the welfare of the economy today. Sounds familiar

'Jam tomorrow' was coined by Lewis Carroll in Alice Through the Looking Glass. It's an elaborate word-play that relies on the reader having a good grasp of Latin, hinging on the word 'iam' (i and j can substitute for one another in Latin). It's 'clever' humour in the style of a highbrow cryptic crossword, and similarly alienating, but the phrase has entered the language, especially in politics and journalism. The point of Carroll's joke is the same one my grandma used to make when I promised I would do some domestic duty "tomorrow": "tomorrow never comes" 

Barbara Castle, who went to Bradford Grammar School, urged the Labour cabinet of 1945 not to equivocate over the implementation of the Beveridge report, declaring that people wanted "jam today not jam tomorrow'. Ted Heath was also a grammar school pupil and made a rather better joke about a Labour Minister of Transport, who he considered had done little to solve the country's transport problems: "the only Minister who produces jam today as well as promising jam tomorrow". (The Minister was Tom Fraser, who closed over 1000 miles of Beeching-condemned railway, including the Oxford-Cambridge line) 

'Jam tomorrow' was rolled out again (in my newspaper) last week in response to Prime Minister Sunak's promise to apply the savings from HS2 decapitation to improvements in northern transport links. A little unjust, in this case, as several of the projects to which he promised to divert money are already completed ('jam yesterday' is also part of the Alice joke, but that never caught on, and probably wasn't in Sunak's mind) 

MrsM would not let me harvest the pitiful few damsons in this year's crop from the top of our fragile tree, justifiably pointing out that we still had some of last year's surplus in the freezer. So these are last year's stones, jammed today, ready for breakfast tomorrow