Rumours of a defection in Scotland

Courtesy of 'Yapping Yousef'

Word reaches me of a story that could really stick it to the SNP as an elected representative is planning to defect to Labour having felt so disillusioned with the Nationalists.

I'm afraid I can't say anymore at the moment but I would thoroughly recommend that everyone reads the papers tomorrow morning!

Now off the top of my head (or with a bit of wiki based research) I can't think of any MP/MSP who is on the edge, so it's probably a Cllr or something, which would be a shame. But then again, would Yousef be so, well, you know, out there about it if it was just a Cllr? This might be nothing, but who knows?

I hope it's not Nicola Sturgeon. Because I really do hate her. This picture is the most flattering one I've ever seen.

Cool your heels lads, she's a shrill and looks nothing like this in real life!

UPDATE: It was a Cllr; and not a pleasant one at that.

South Lanarkshire councillor John McNamee has quit the party, which had initiated disciplinary procedures against him over concerns over his expense claims and were investigating him over alleged “inappropriate behaviour” at a social function.

Tory deregulation

From the Guardian.

The Conservatives today claimed they were willing to loosen BT's grip on the local telephone network and use parts of the BBC licence fee to deliver "superfast" broadband to the majority of Britain's homes by 2017.

Using "market-based solutions" the party believes the UK can be the first leading European country to have speeds of "up to" 100 megabits per second (Mbps), the shadow chancellor George Osborne said. He said "the Conservatives would support changes to the regulatory ­framework", adding that private investors being allowed to pay for better cabling would encourage competition.

I wonder if the market based solutions will result in a field as competitive as the railways post privatisation? I wonder if logging on in the UK will be anything like getting a train in the early 1990s and I wonder if the companies are already producing equipment to keep the network free of leaves. If the network was deregulated, why would a private company want to supply phone/internet access to a tiny hamlet about 40 miles away from anywhere? That's right, they wouldn't.
But it's OK, because:

...the proposal to tax the BBC would benefit Rupert Murdoch's BskyB and the Tory donor Carphone Warehouse.

With, of course, a hat tip to everyones favourite DPM.

More information here at Left Foot Forward.

David Davis: Hypocrite, anyone?

An interesting addition to the "Can someone please find a real reason to slaughter Tony Blair" brigade. David Davis MP, the valiant, sefless moral Crusader, lends his voice.

"Blair's concept of war seems pure Hollywood", our learned observer says. I hope the hypocrisy isn't only apparent to me. This from the man who used the equally important issue of civil liberties in a way some may see as rather "Hollywood" too. Thing is, I thought he was quite good to resign and make a point. However, let's be honest, there was no danger of him not being returned to office in the resulting by-election. He knew what he was doing and he used the issue for political gain. That is what politicians do.

I know the examples aren't 100% the same, but I just think it's a little rich. He's hardly Gandhi.

And more on the Blair issue. (I don't want to dwell on it, but it is pretty important. And riling.)

I think there is, ironically, a sense of anti-success from the people on the parts of the political spectrum that have been suggesting Labour's financial reforms have been anti-success. In Davis' article as well as many other examples, including this from Andrew Rawnsley, there is an extreme bitterness that some shock revelation didn't come out that Blair actually had his Cabinet tied up at gunpoint to make them accept that war was the answer.

Could it not be that he was just right? Could it not be that the intelligence was wrong but, hey, we got rid of Saddam and that's all good and rather than moan and bitch about the recovery going wrong, we put our efforts into, hmmm, putting it right?

"[Blair] seems to forget the vast number of innocent casualties", says Davis. Really? Does he? It's not clear whether he means the dead soldiers or the dead civilians. Either way, the extreme efforts made by Blair to fund the recovery show he clearly isn't unaware of the civilian deaths. And letters to soldiers' families along with countless TV and press gigs he did to express his sadness at the deaths of soldiers indicates to me that he is acutely aware of the sadness of those too.

Rawnsley, in his piece, seems devastated that Blair didn't get questioned as if he was on trial. And he seems resentful that Blair responded to questions with gusto and with his head high, instead of apologising in a quivering wreck.

This is, to me, all very strange. The purpose of the inquiry is to try and pin down the truth, see what happened that can be improved upon in future, and move on; is it not? If not, then please correct me. Blair answered the questions. That's all he's there to do.

I'm not going to mention this anymore as I don't even know what point I'm trying to make anymore amongst the endless column inches of drivel being produced in the mainstream media.

Again, viva internationalism!!

LetUsFaceTheFuture.

Even more Daily Fail Shubtill

The cherry popping of Elf n Safety shubtill on this blog...

...it seems the toothpick has become the latest victim of the health and safety police - leaving disgruntled diners with food stuck between their molars.

Staff at a luxury hotel chain are refusing to provide customers with the post-meal dental sticks - because they are 'potentially dangerous'.

From the Daily Mail, 22/1/10.

Well a site that I lurk at now and again; the excellent Mailwatch, have extracts from an e-mail conversation one of their posters had with the hotel. It makes excellent reading.

From: xxxx
Sent: 27 January 2010 11:35
To: Customer Services
Subject: OH, NO - NOT THAT TOOTHPICK AGAIN!

Dear Sir/Madam,

I hope this is not a too unwelcome email. I have written to the Portal Hotel in Tarporley to ask for their view on the " TOOTHPICK GATE " furore. In my experience, stories like this often bear little likeness to what actually happened. In the stuff I've seen on the Web, reference is made to Head Office, which is why I'm writing to ask you for your response to the story.

Please note that I'm not a journalist out to set you up!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

R.A.Vant (Mr)

So far so good; ready for the fun part? Because we know the Mail would never, ever, exaggerate or fictionalise certain parts of a story?

From: xxx
To: xxxx
Cc: Customer Services
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2010 2:39 PM
Subject: RE: OH, NO - NOT THAT TOOTHPICK AGAIN!

Dear Mr Vant

Thank you for your e-mail. I have not as yet received any correspondence from you directly at the hotel, so will reply via the e-mail as passed on to me by Customer Services.

Unfortunately I do not have a lengthy response for you, except to note the following:

- There is absolutely no directive from Head Office with regards toothpicks, and this was not noted to the guest by the senior manager on duty, as implied by the various articles
- There is no law against toothpicks, and this was certainly not reported to the guest concerned
- The hotel had genuinely run out of toothpicks, and we are at a complete loss as to why the waiter would have come up with the Health & Safety excuse, unfortunately being a casual staff member and University student, we haven't as yet seem him to ask
- The guest concerned had in fact ordered a bespoke meal for himself and his wife, and this was different to the rest of the visiting diners
- The guest was found a "toothpick" once the situation had been brought to the attention of the manager on duty that evening

We have found the articles to be quite amusing, and somewhat out of context, however these are the joys of the media grapevine and a little bit of "story telling". If anything, it has been wonderful publicity for the hotel, and bookings are up.

Nowadays we very rarely get a request for toothpicks, as generally society frowns on the art of teeth picking in public, a somewhat ugly act whilst other are diners enjoying their own meals.

Should you require anything further, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Yours sincerely

What I never, ever will understand is how these stories get to the newspapers? Do the people go themselves, send an email? Did the plonker in the picture think, 'Oh, I know, I'll ring the Mail' as soon as it happened? And as the manager alludes to, what sort of person picks his teeth at the table these days, anyway? (A Daily Mail reader, duuuuh)

Well, to be honest, funnelling Dicky Littlecock, you really couldn't make it up.

Unit4d K1ngDum IndyPundent Partei

There are two upsides to this turn of events:

1. The well known UKIP candidate hopefully splits the ignorant bastard vote in Barking, squeezing Nick Griffin and his ego. (which is important, as the BNP hold 9 Council seats in the area and were only 30 or so votes away from coming second to Labour in 2005)
2. A good old Sunday chuckle.

Of course, quoted in UKIP voters favourite read the Daily Mail, Maloney claimed that the mistake had been his intention all along, and had done it before in fact!

‘I did that on purpose to see how many people pay attention,’ he added. ‘It causes interest. It means people start talking to you.’

He said he had used the same trick on promotional posters for boxing contests

100 of your finest British Pennies to anybody who can find a poster advertising a fight Maloney promoted with words misspelt. More of the same to anybody whose opinion of anyone who has misspells posters for attention is anything other than "twat".

Impartial polling...

PoliticsHome provides an interesting insight into what should now be called the Tony Blair Inquiry.

The link is here

In their latest poll to their politically in-tune audience, they asked the following...

Regardless of whether you supported or opposed military action in Iraq, which of the following statements most closely describes your view on who you see as being responsible for Britain's participation in the conflict?

The answers were as follows...

Tony Blair is personally responsible - 30%

The Cabinet and the intelligence services, along with Tony Blair and his advisors, are responsible - 33%

I don't think it's possible to apportion responsibility in this way. Elements of the government, parliament, the media and the public are all responsible - 23%

The MPs of all parties who voted for the war are responsible - 11%

Interesting.

Of course, I'm all for scrutiny. And we should always hold our leaders to account.

However, you have to wonder...

Was it Blair's fault? Of course, he had a deep desire to go in. And has admitted, pretty much, that he would have found a way whatever happened. But that's the kind of decisiveness you'd expect from a man who is Prime Minister. You'd also expect people to want such decisiveness from their PM.

The intelligence? Ok, it was flawed. But, as has previously been noted in this blog, hindsight is 20:20.

The MPs who voted for it were just voting based on the aforementioned, erroneous intelligence. So blame can't be apportioned to them really.

So who, or what, was responsible?

Call me crazy, but could it be the man also responsible for this....

I didn't see his name on the list of options for the poll though.

Why don't these disgustingly ignorant, selfish people in this country take into consideration that these helpless people were massacred by the leader of their own country?

Like Tony said, by now, Hussein would have accumulated more capabilities to commit more atrocities like this.

So the anti-war brigade need to get their white-dreadlocked heads out of their root-eating, rag-wearing, bike-riding backsides, look at the real world and consider that there are more important things going on that need to be dealt with than their liberal crusade against anything and everything that might offend one iota of one person's fragile personality.

If we don't help to eliminate people like Saddam, these poor bastards certainly won't. What's more, their innocent voices will be lost in the History of evil men and their evil deeds, without even their children to tell the tale of horror. And this, while the voices of the middle-class hippies get broadcast in major cities and on major networks.

• 1986-1989 - 200,000 Kurdish lives massacred.
• 1991 - 60,000 Shi'ites killed.
• Human Rights Offcials estimate nearly 1,000,000 Iraqi politicians killed.

Viva internationalism!

LetUsFaceTheFuture.

More Mail Non-Stories

The Hillary - Milliband relationship story that the Mail have been pushing for a while is rather amusing. While I'm obviously, no fan of infidelity and adultery wouldn't it be cracking to see the look on Mr Clinton's face when he realised two could play at that game?

However, as with 90% of stories in the Daily Mail, it is based on a single quote from a magazine interview HRC did a few months ago, and quotes from anonymous sources at a NATO summit. The usual Mail rigour was obviously used in researching this.

Well, todays offering is a "snub" "Hilly" has delivered to "Milly".

Mr Miliband, who is favourite to succeed Mr Brown as Labour leader, proudly told them how he had use of Chevening, situated near a lake in a 3,500-acre estate.

Warming to his theme, he gushed: ‘It is a wonderful house with 115 rooms and enormous grounds. It is big enough for all of you to stay. In fact, why don’t you all come?’

A grinning Mrs Clinton – who has confessed to having a ‘big crush’ on the Foreign Secretary – is said to have provoked laughter by teasing him: ‘That would be lovely, David, but you’d better do it before May 6.’

Did this happen? Probably. Snub? No. Joke? Yes. Is it important what is said in private (people forget more and more; these politicians, you know, are real people) about an election in which HRC is most probably going to be rooting for the side she just "snubbed"? No. Is this even really worth their while in writing? No. Have they written it for any reason other than to further riducule the government? No. (Although one must admit they have been quite good at doing that themselves recently)

I cannot wait to see the front page of the Daily Fail if the reds do pull it out of the bag and sneak home. Once I've seen the look on Osbournes face the Mail will be my next port of call.

What is wrong with some people?

I like to call them Labour-lemmings.

There are some MPs in the PLP who seem intent on bringing down the government they worked so hard to create. First we had Hewitt and Hoon intent on torpedoeing the party, and now, on a smaller scale but no less stupid and completely unfathomable, I present, ladies and gentlemen...

Paul Flynn.


From the Beeb. "People who administer bone-crushing handshakes to prove the strength of their personalities should be charged with assault, says a Labour MP"

On the ground it was looking like it would be a fight to keep his seat as it was, now he has insulted probably at least half of his constituents and demonstrated how completely out of touch he is (I mean, whose response to this problem isn't 'So what?') who knows what might happen.

Lemming.

P.S. I have now had chance to read Flynns blog properly. Oh. My. God.

The Long Campaign might just work in 2010

Seasoned political watchers will know that the reason for the length of the campaign in 1997 was because John Major and the bastard sons and daughters of Thatcher thought that it would show the public how flimsy new Labour was. That didn't work then but it seems it may work this time around, and it is a disaster all of Camerons making. (Or is it Osbournes, as he is the GE Coordinator?)

It was a Tory decision to begin the campaign so early in the new year: the posters, now ridiculed, the most obvious demonstration of this.

This has been followed by utter confusion over their policies on families and taxation, and things are slowly, starting to happen. A YouGov poll for the Telegraph show the gap now 7 points, CON 38%(-2), LAB 31%(nc), LDEM 19%(+1) and an IpsosMori poll shows it as 8 CON 40%(-3), LAB 32%(+6), LDEM 16%(-4).

Squeaky bum time for the Cameroons, and it's only the end of January.

When do you know Liberal Democrats are lying?

When they talk about hospitals!

People who are always amazed at the inaccuracies and outwright lies the FibDems peddle and get away with will remember the boast that only electing a Liberal MP in a Manchester constituency in 2005 would save the local hospital; a cancer hospital that the local SHA and Primary Care Trust stated they had no intention of closing.

Well they are at it again! The Mirror's Kevin Maguire sat opposite a man on a train, later revealed to be local FibDem strategist Dan Falchikov (after he uploaded the picture to Twitter!) boasting about how the campaign had been created and how he had fed the story to the Evening Standard. Astroturfing at its most cynical one must say!

Yet still Nick Clegg has a video on their Facebook Campaign page, which so far only has smattering of people posting the truth on it. The FibDems are yet to apologise for what is clearly a completely made up story, and the boy Nick clearly is willing to stand for such cynical electioneering from his whiter than white party.

More information here and spew, here

Liberal Hysteria over Iraq is so sad

It really, really is, and that is before you ask them what they would have done instead of supporting the removal of a murderous tyrannical dictator.

What wasn't sad; what was, in fact, very funny, was seeing Sarah Teather demonstrate how ignorant she was on Question Time the other week; interrupting and talking over everybody else.

Anyway, the fuss over Iraq has only intensified with Tony Blair testifying at Chilcott. It is clear that there is only one scenario which will satisfy liberals and Liberal Democrats. It goes something like this.

1. Blair admits that he, Tony Bliar invented, along with Alistair Campbell, the entire intelligence dossier on Iraq and WMD.
2. Blair admits that George W. Bush told him to do this.
3. Blair admits that he withheld funding from our Armed Forces to give the Iraqis a chance.
4. Blair admits that he and George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq the first time they ever met.
5. Blair admits that the reason they did this was for the oodles of oil below Iraq.
6. Blair then begs the British judicial system to punish him, and/or the government send him to the Hague.
7. Blair prostrates himself before a IWCT and begs them to hang him.

Unless that happens then there will be calls for another enquiry, and another, and another and another, until that does actually happen! There is no 'new and compelling evidence' and I doubt there will be, so double jeopardy must apply!

Keir thinks liberals and Liberal Democrats need to get over themselves. Whilst they sing about reform of government, it seems the future PM they want is one that is afraid of making decisions to protect the country in case 5 years down the line a group of the muesli eating unshaven and unwashed decide to bowdlerize his name, and then get every decision made, action taken, examined by a enquiry completely out of context and out of the atmosphere of the time. Hindsight is indeed 20:20.

That is the precedent set by Chilcott; and the commentariat have the gall to call Gordon Brown indecisive! If they're not careful (the entire liberal media who seem intent on painting Blair as satan) then they will create a PM neccessarily indecisive out of a worry for his future freedom of movement!

Sickeningly, Melanie Phillips gets it.

A blast from the past...

In my daily self flagellation that is the reading of the masses of the hysterical right wing bloggers from the UK (at least you can laugh at Michelle Malkin, she lives abroad, but Guido, Dale, and Old Holborn live on the same bit of soil as me!) I spotted poor Iain bemoaning the fact that yet again he has missed out on selection for a seat; this time in Suffolk, to succeed the burger muncher himself, John Gummer. You can see that for yourself here under "Friday Snippets"

This is one of the things I don't understand; Daley managed to run up 10,000 people who hated him in 2005, seems to be toxic to all at CCHQ (despite being on the 'Priority List') and many in local Associations, (or is just insanely unlucky) yet still is one of the 'most read' political bloggers in the UK!

Anyway, back to the blast from the past. Turns out that one of the people who beat him onto the shortlist for Suffolk Coastal (and a pretty safe route into Parliament) was Therese Coffey! This poor woman got a bashing in my home constituency of Wrexham in 2005, being beat into third place behind the Fibbing Democrats. So a loser in Wrexham gets a possible free-ride elsewhere! (she does seem to have some support over at Conservative Home)


I don't blame them in a way though; anyone who has put in the hard yards in Wrexham for the Tories deserves something, although I'm not sure the poor people of Suffolk Coastal deserve a useless PPC and MP who herself has already been beaten in at least one nominating battle (to succeed David Wilshire in Spelthorne) and missed out in the European Elections!

But hey, Therese, don't worry, if you carry on like this your rather garish blog might start rivalling Dale's!