craig

Liveblogging The Foreign Policy Debate

 in The Election by | View Comments

For an irreverent liveblog of the great SkyNews foreign policy debate, from a man who has forgotten more about foreign policy than they will ever know, I will be liveblogging here with my mate Haward.

Opening observation. The bookies including SkyBet, PaddyPower and Ladbrokes, are offering odds on words which will be used. Here are some of the odds from Ladbrokes:

Trident 1/20

Obama 1/5

Helicopters 1/5

Hung Parliament 1/4

Volcanic Ash 4/7

Ahmadinejad evens

Chilcot 5/4

http://sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/Politics-c110000037

There are dozens of these keywords you can bet on between the various bookies. Nowhere in the betting is the word “Palestine” being even considered. Says it all, really.

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Mike Whellans – A Really Stylish Protest

 in Sleaze by | View Comments

There are few recent protest songs that you would listen to for the sheer musical pleasure of it. But here is one from bluesman Mike Whellans – and that’s the great piper Mike Katz on guitar.

For more of both Mikes:

http://www.templerecords.co.uk/newwebsite/home.php

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Tory Whistling in the Dark

 in The Election by | View Comments

As the Tories get more shrill and more desperate, they veer wildly between nasty and deluded.

The worst of all the poll news for them was this poll of marginal seats from Ipsos Mori. In 57 marginal New Labour constituencies which the Tories have to take to get a majority, voting intention is New Labour 36, Conservative 32 and Lib Dem 23.

Tory support is down 6, New Labour support down 5 and Lib Dem support up 12.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE63L1OM20100422?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

Remember, this is a poll only of New Lab held marginals – so the New Lab lead is not a sign of general trend. Lib Dem vote is lowest in New Lab/Tory marginals, so for them to be at 23% in this poll is remarkable.

But these are seats which Tories must win to be in government. Not only are they not winning, they are falling further behind. Especially galling for them, when these are precisely the seats in which under their national strategy, Lord Ashcroft’s millions of campaign funds have been concentrated.

Now we come to the sensational delusion. Ladies and gentleman, I give you Toby Young, complete deluded arsehole. His spin on this poll, in which the Tory vote is down 6 per cent in a week?

“Reuters/Ipsos MORI marginals poll: Conservative Party support remains firm”

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100035907/reutersipsos-mori-marginals-poll-conservative-party-support-remains-firm/

Young’s brilliant argument to support this – there are still the same number of Tory voters, it is just that a lot more people are now going to vote for other parties.

Toby Young. What a wanker.

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Light in the Darkness

 in The Book by | View Comments

I hope that I have been able to tell people quite a lot of truth about the deeply unpleasant workings of government. It cheers me up a lot when I stumble across something like this, part of a reader’s review of Andrew Rawnsley’s hagiography of the Blairites, Servants of the People:

This book is fairly authoritative. The reader is fairly convinced that he is getting an accurate picture. It is of course only one view. If you compare Rawnsley’s account of the Arms for Africa affair with that of high-ranking civil servant Craig Murray in his ‘The Catholic Orangemen of Togo’, you see how a ‘Blair rides to the rescue’ story conceals another narrative of corruption and mass-murder in Africa with Britain unwilling to look under the headlines and uncaring about the consequences as long as they get their boys out of the swamp.

http://www.books2read.co.uk/blog/general/servants-of-the-people-the-inside-story-of-new-labour/

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