OFCOM states that Sky News is biased, aggressive and Tory

The media regulator Ofcom has dismissed almost 2,800 complaints about Sky News's coverage of the general election.

Viewers had objected to Adam Boulton's treatment of the Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, and his on-screen clash with the former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, aas well as Kay Burley's interview with an electoral reformist.

Boulton, the Sky News political editor, attracted 1,787 complaints. A total of 671 viewers complained about an interview between Boulton and Campbell on Monday 10 May. Most of the complainants objected to what they viewed as unprofessional behaviour by Boulton, who appeared to lose his temper after Campbell accused him of being "upset that David Cameron is not prime minister".

"Two well-known personalities from the worlds of politics and journalism were taking part in a debate about a matter of topical and serious concern," said Ofcom. "We considered that although the tone and content of this exchange was unusual, it would not have been beyond the likely expectations of the audience for this channel."

Here.

Cleggheads

OK, so Keir promised no more bitterness...

But this has got to be one of the most fantastic contradictions of the Coalition's two front men.

Nick Clegg, this morning:

"[Big Society]...will be radical change that puts power back into the hands of the people....be bringing down vested interest and giving people real control over the lives we build in a Britain that is fair."

Nick Clegg, in Cardiff, during the election campaign:

"We are in the futures business, the Tories are in the risk business...'Big Society' is just a front to launch public service cuts. It's DIY, you're on your own public services. Like a lot about todays Tory Party, Big Society sounds nice enough, it looks fine, but scratch beneath the surface and it is the same Tory Party of old. To govern is to choose and they have their priorities wrong."

Considering the bile poured on the Labour Party for 'spin', it is absolutely hilarious. Either a. Clegg is lying about what his real opinion of the 'Big Society' is, or b. He has been won over by David's persuasive charms.

If it's a, then he really is a power grabbing, vacuous waste of space, and if it's b, Keir feels for the countless millions who voted for a man who clearly has so few convictions and principles he is willing to change his mind so dramatically.

How can Cameron believe a word Clegg is saying: it's like the Jeremy Kyle conundrum: he has cheated on his partner and left her for you. Why shouldn't you think he is going to do the exact same thing to you? Jeremy says it is paranoia, and normally puts it down to a drug/alcohol problem. But for Dave, this is the reality of government.

(HT to Red Rag)

Poor old Montgomeryshire

Montgomeryshire is a lovely part of the world, even if my only experience is driving through it...

They don't really have much luck with their elected representatives though...

In the House of Commons they have everybodies favorite paraglider, bon vivant, celebrity botherer and Daily Star columnist Lembit Opik (Keir's significant other had the honour of sharing a lift with him, and he can exclusively reveal that our favourite Estonian kept his hands to himself.)


Whilst in the Senedd they are lucky enough to be represented by former Teacher and Farmer Mick Bates, who, Keir can not so exclusively reveal physically and verbally abused a paramedic after a heavy night on the probably taxpayer funded wine in Cardiff.


Obviously, the Liberal Democrats are the nice, fluffy, friendly party who have suspended him immediately...um, no, well, they are "investigating" things.

Keir was at one point a student and often did some rather silly things (although none really compare to assaulting medical staff) However, if he had tried to fob off friends in the morning by claiming he could not remember what happened then to say he would have been a laughing stock is putting it mildly.

Our representatives are meant to hold themselves to a higher level of probity. It has been made clear that they certainly don't at Westminster, (Hello Steen, Morley, Chaytor, I'm looking at you) and now it is clear that they don't in Cardiff Bay. It also seems pretty clear that these events happened (the paramedic is going to press charges) so I think that Micky's position should really be untenable. However, Montgomeryshire is going to be open warfare come election time, and do the Fibs really want to risk losing a seat in the Senedd? Keir supposes that the electoral math will overshadow the morality of things.

This case highlights how completely out of her depth Kirsty Williams is too. I mean, she is rather lovely, but "investigating"? That is the second most stupid thing I've heard a FibDem say recently, after Mark Oaten on 'Tower Block of Commons' said "...I need to investigate if the BNP is racist..."

It also shows that far from being the nice, environmentally friendly and personally unobjectionable party they pretend to be; the FibDems are just like the other two parties. Hopefully, people soon see through their nice fluffy exterior. In fact, on the ground, the yellow team are as nasty as you like.

As an upside, Keir would like to say that this furore masked coverage of the Fib's spring Conference in Swansea, but um, yeah, there wasn't much of that anyway.

It's a shame really, Keir is currently reading a history of the SDP; and if it wasn't for those pesky Liberals...

Chris Grayling

Chris Grayling, Shadow Home Sec., and a perfect example of how thin the Blue teams squad really, is, and the man who brought you this:

A few weeks ago, I spent one of the most illuminating evenings that I have had since entering politics out with the specialist police team in Manchester's Moss Side that works to tackle the gang issues in the area...It's the world of the drama series 'The Wire'

and on [mis]hearing that General Sir Richard Dannatt had agreed to advise the Tories:

I hope that this isn't a political gimmick

is at it again...

The Tories, and in particular Grayling, attack "broken Britain", they claim in a press release that:


However, what they ignore is that in 2002 a new counting and reporting standard was introduced which vastly increased the numbers of violent crime. The same figures have caveats plastered all over it...yet the Tories missed it.

Either way, incompetance or pure politicking, you can be sure that if it was the Labour Party Davey C (and his media acolytes) would be having a field day. Can you imagine the eqv. Mail headline?

So, where is your righteous indignation..?

Echoes of what Keir said yesterday

I cannot help but think that if the Deputy Chairman of the Labour Party had such a murky tax status then there would be much more made of it than this. It seems that the new Conservatives are still in the middle of their honeymoon period with the media; and/or their communications staff are much more effective spinners than Labour at the moment.

From the Guardian today

They have been all over the place on the economy, repeatedly changing tack since the financial crisis exploded in late 2008. The voters are noticing. Witness the latest ComRes survey which showed the Conservative lead over Labour slipping to just seven points, with waning confidence in the Tories' economic plans a key factor: 82% of voters want Cameron to be clearer on his plans for the economy; and 69% reject the notion that, had they been in power, the Tories would have ended the recession any sooner.

The problem for Cameron is that his wobbling is not confined to the economy. There's a pattern here, in which the one thing consistent about the Tories is their inconsistency. "Vote blue, go green", the early, eco-version of Cameron urged; yet two-thirds of planning applications to build wind turbines are rejected by Tory councils. That's the policy equivalent of riding a bicycle followed by a car that carries your bags. (Further green embarrassment came yesterday, when Osborne announced that Lord Stern, an authority on the ­economics of climate change, was on board as an adviser, only for his lordship, moments later, to issue a statement denying any such thing.)

It's hug a hoodie one moment, build a floating jail the next. Cameron boasts of transparency out of one side of his mouth, only to stonewall questions about the residency of his party's ultra-generous donor, Lord Ashcroft, out of the other. Still, nearly a decade after he was ennobled, the Tory party won't say if their sugar daddy – who is helping to fund the Tories' big push in marginal seats – is resident in the UK for tax purposes. It has now emerged that Ashcroft is not only the Conservatives' deputy chairman, he is also a de facto member of the party's foreign affairs team. Last year he flew William Hague to Havana on his private jet, hosted him on his yacht, then accompanied him at meetings with Cuban government officials. Handy for Ashcroft, who has major business interests in the region. But an odd way for Hague, who could be foreign secretary in May, to conduct himself.

It goes on. Truly, the Conservatives are the gift that keeps on giving. If it isn't the revelation that would-be MP and pin-up Zac Goldsmith was until last year a non-dom, it's the clandestine Tory effort to merge with Northern Ireland's unionist parties – which would surely make a Cameron government ineligible for the vital role of peace broker between unionists and nationalists that London has played for more than a decade. (I'm told this has disquieted the Americans, who fear that if a prime minister Cameron can't do that job, they'll have to.)

...

Imagine what the British press would have done with equivalent revelations about, say, Neil Kinnock's Labour party in 1983. Just one of those stories would have been enough to shred the challenger alive. But barely a glove is laid on the Tories. The broadcasters don't insist that Cameron give them a straight answer on Ashcroft, for instance; most don't even ask the question.

Here here. Things can only get better.

Tory u-turn

Well I was going to blog on the u-turn announced by confused-Cameron at the weekend, but I found The Novocastrian's post to be a much better version than I think mine would have been.

Go and read it!

#Kerryin

For the lucky amongst you who have not been bitten by the need to read blogs and bloggers which you find repugnant maybe I should fill you in with a bit of background.

(The lovely) Kerry McCarthy MP, Labour's 'Twitter Tsar' came under sustained attack from right wing bloggers (Tory Bear and everyones favourite non-prospective parliamentary candidate Iain Dale to mention two) over her expenses amongst other things, and this led to the #Kerryout hashtag on Twitter. Her Tory opponent in the seat set up a page on MyConservatives.com and began rapidly raising money (although not that much; not quite £2k) The Tory Bloggers crowed, could this be the first constituency won through the power of internet fundraising and online politics? Would this prove how revolutionary and how so very right they all were?

Ummmmmmmmmmmmm?

The terrible twosome of the opposition parties was completed when the usual Fib Dem fictional leaflets appeared, stated that "...only the Lib Dems can beat Labour here...". Usually they show graphs of door-knockings, European Election results, or something else as equally irrelevant to the General Election. This time however, they did not take into account the boundary adjustments that considerable changed the demographic of the seat; dropping them from second to a few thousand behind the Tories in third. But since when have the Lib Dems been concerned with the truth?

Well, Kerry's opponent was Adeela Shafi. The Mirror has a scoop on her today:

A key member of David Cameron's new generation of women MPs has had three county court judgments against her since 2007 - including one for almost £325,000.

And her husband Ijaz Shafi was declared bankrupt in 2000.

Muslim lecturer Adeela Shafi was hand-picked by Cameron to open for him at the 2008 Tory Conference.

He then endorsed her as a Parliamentary candidate and campaigned in her Bristol East constituency along with his shadow cabinet team.

The excellent Political Scrapbook explains the significance clearer and simpler than I ever could:

The Insolvency Act 1986 and Enterprise Act 2002 outlaw undischarged bankrupts from standing for Westminster and provide for bankrupt MPs to be turfed out. Application for a bankruptcy petition by creditors (her husband was declared insolvent in 2000) could leave the Tories without a candidate or, should Shafi pull off a shock win in Bristol East, a Member of Parliament. Scrapbook doubts this is the kind of gamble voters will plump for on May 6.

The bombshell leaves Shafi open to allegations of recklessness from fellow Tories and recalls the recent case of the SNP’s original candidate in the Glasgow North East by-election, who was forced to stand down within five days of selection after failing to declare serious financial problems.

This is the kind of campaign development that party staffers dread and the stuff of absolute nightmares for election agents. What’s that sound?

The wheels coming off one of the Tories’ most visible campaigns.

The rather pathetic right wing campaign comes to an end. Shafi's position must be untenable now. I guess she has already spent most of the money she raised too so thats all wasted on signs and posters with her name on it. Funnily enough there is very little mention of the campaign on the right-wingnuts blogs at the moment, and what is hilarious, is that on the #Kerryout website, the live Twitter stream shows nothing but crowing texts from Labour activists. Score one for the good guys.

Never mind Tory Bear* and Daley, better luck next time. #KERRYIN

*Tory Bear smells a rat by the sound of his rather bitter Tweeting recently!

ooh clever, tip off the mirror, coordinated blog and twitter attack and phone bank on the same day. Labour machine kicks in!

Diddums. Thats right. #GameOn

Tory Sleaze

Some good coverage today and yesterday of the elephant in the Tory Party, Lord Ashcroft. I cannot help but think that if the Deputy Chairman of the Labour Party had such a murky tax status then there would be much more made of it than this. It seems that the new Conservatives are still in the middle of their honeymoon period with the media; and/or their communications staff are much more effective spinners than Labour at the moment. (A bit of both I feel)

Yesterday we saw Billy Hague and Ashcroft in the spotlight. The Guardian led with:

Calls to clarify Lord Ashcroft's position after revelation that he provided flights for William Hague's visit to Havana last year, and then accompanied him to top-level meetings

It was also noted later in the article that Hague and Ashcroft met the Cuban government, which:

...breached the spirit of European rules, which state that such visits should not take place until and unless until there is a freedom to meet opponents of the regime.

So; not only does his role in a potential future Cameron Ministry (and even in the Shadow Cabinet at the moment) need further investigation, Billy and Ashcroft also broke protocol in regards to furthering democracy in Cuba.

Then, today, more trouble for Ashcroft.

Since Lord Ashcroft's ennoblement, the question of where he lives has continued to be raised, leading to speculation that Lord Ashcroft has not satisfied the undertaking he gave. Statements by senior politicians concerning Lord Ashcroft's undertaking have been evasive and obfuscatory and have served to compound this speculation.Lord Ashcroft could have ended the speculation about his residency by making a public statement to that effect. He has chosen not to do this...

The Conservative Party has been getting away with this for far too long. Ashcroft is singlehandedly bankrolling the parties operation in marginal seats, as well as, in his position as Deputy Party Chairman, involved in strategy. His residency status must become a central part of the attack on the Tories. How can someone so murky, with such a confused and unclear background, have such an integral part in the result of the election?

Keir awaits with baited breath the Cabinet Office's release of the information...

UPDATE: Rather fantastically, most outlets are running with differing versions of this picture, depicting a rather sweaty looking Ashcroft...

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.

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".

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.