The Best Downfall

The best Downfall mash was this one. Why? Because it perfectly captured the massive Labour wobble about Brown in 2008, when they could have got rid of him. It also reminds us why the Guardian has switched sides today, and regrets reversing the position it took at the time: that Brown should have gone.

Mind you, it's bloody funny too. Be warned, however, that there are tons of swear words, and I usually try to stay away from that kind of language. I bloody do.

Paxman-Brown

Just watched the interview that I had hoped would be the clincher that finally ended the Brown nightmare once and for all.

Initially, I was encouraged by Paxman's enthusiasm in pursuing Brown on his lies about, well, just about everything, and his terrible record everywhere. Then, after Brown did his usual trick of attacking the interviewer for not asking him the right questions, I really thought Paxman would lose it and go for the jugular. You know, a Howard moment, which he could have done with a question like "You say you take responsibility for the things you think you are responsible for. Name them." Something like that, or better (he was in a massively target rich environment about ten minutes in). But he didn't - and I was pretty unimpressed.

Then, once the whole, sorry spectacle of wriggling, delusion, desperate, hate-filled divisiveness and contemptuous revisionism was over, I realised what Paxman had really done. In fact he hadn't suddenly decided half way through, for some perverse personal, politically motivated reason, to go easy on Brown. He'd done precisely what everyone else has done when it comes to this useless, troubled man, including the editors of the Guardian (laughably).

He'd just given up.

And that was more damning than a hundred Howard moments, and it sealed Brown's fate in just the way I had hoped - finally and permanently - but not quite in the way I'd imagined.

So - and I never thought I'd be saying this - well done Paxman. You've finally done your compatriots a genuine service.

Brown Hates Everyone

Nasty piece of work

I'm not a huge fan of the Mail, and certainly not its columnists, generally speaking. But in amongst all the pointless posturing and frequent pandering to their own puerile interpretation of middle England values, you do occasionally get a bit of a gem...

Watching Brown's lunatic performance on Wednesday was painful, and, frankly, baffling. What kind of a man is this unasked for Prime Minister, wondered millions of people? Well, I reckon Richard Littlejohn might have found the answer. The bloke's a borderline sociopath, according to this old bruiser of a feature writer, at least in terms of his public life. Littlejohn says:

Here are some commonly accepted traits of sociopathic behaviour. Stop me when you’ve heard enough.
Glibness and superficial charm; manipulative and cunning.

Check.

Grandiose sense of self and entitlement.

Check.

Pathological lying; absence of remorse, shame or guilt; callousness and lack of empathy.

Check.

Refusal to accept blame; tendency to blame others even for acts they obviously committed.

Check.

Authoritarian; secretive; paranoid; narcissism; grandiosity; an over-inflated belief in their own powers and abilities.

Check.

Prone to rage and abuse; outraged by insignificant matters.

Check.

Instead of friends, they have only victims and accomplices who tend to end up as victims.

Check.

The end always justifies the means; nothing must stand in their way.

Check, check.

Our survey said... Anyone we know?

Tell me which of the above does not apply to Gordon Brown. Well, I can't. Can you?

Personally, I think 'sociopath' is far too grand a term for Brown. I think he's just a narcissistic martinet with deep seated insecurities. But, hey, what do I know? Make up your own mind.

The only thing that still amazes me is that people are still planning on voting for this loser. They must be as delusional as he plainly is. It's alarming that they're loose in the country!

Ah well, only six more days to go, give or take a few hours. And then we'll be rid of, wait for it, the worst prime minister and government ever to have been inflicted on this country.

Bigotgate: The Game

As Crash Gordon becomes Car Crash Gordon (how weird was that? Watch it here), a new game's been released to celebrate Wednesday's Brown-inspired campaign disaster, when he manfully took on a sweet old lady and was battered.

Be the gaffe prone jinxed PM, who can cause a car accident from 100 yards just by opening his gob, and pit your wits against Duffy, the Vampire Slayer (cheers for that, John Ward). Can you do better than Brown? Can you go more than one round before you, too, are devoured! See if Cameron or Clegg would do any better (they could hardly do any worse ;)

Play Downing Street Fighter (now with Gillian Duffy bonus round) here.

Cameron, PM

I've got it wrong before, so I'll most likely get it wrong again. My impression of this debate is that Brown under pressure was only ever really able to fall back on discredited smears and lies to try to score the odd point. Unfortunately for him, he's been found out, and his record speaks for itself.

Clegg once more tried to play on the anti-politics trick - it's tired, but the goodwill for him, that means people aren't listening closely enough to the monstrous contradictions in his party's manifesto, and, let's face it, in his party, will massage any positive view of his hesitant performance. To me, in trying so hard to rise above it all, from time to time he seemed simply to float away.

Cameron, by contrast, was tolerant, statesmanlike, patient and, above all, (and what he wasn't in the last two) completely coherent. He delivered on the substance, he sounded like a man with a positive hunger to turn this country around, but, above all, he calmly destroyed - destroyed - Gordon Brown.

As many have said, Brown needed to win this debate. Even if the popular, or spun (or both) opinion disagrees with the view that Cameron won by a country mile, what will be beyond debate from now until Election Day (or doomsday, for that matter) is that Brown lost it, and lost it bad.

Either way, that was the decider performance from Cameron that I expected, and got.

Cameron has just delivered on the faith many of us had in him, most of the time ;) He's delivered a Conservative government.

Breathe a sigh of relief on May 7th, when the work really starts. I will.

++Update++
A far better writer than I will ever be, Peter Hoskin, has framed it thus:

...as soon as it came to clarifying Lib Dem policy on an amnesty for illegal immigrants, the wings rapidly fell off the yellow bird of liberty. All of a sudden, Clegg sounded rattled and unpersuasive. From then on in, it was Cameron's game.

It helped that Cameron had the clearest – and, I suspect, the most popular – line on immigration: "We would cut immigration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands." But, really, the Tory leader's strongest answer came in a subsequent question on improving opportunities for younger generations. What we got then was what Cameron does best: the sunshine, the positivity, the sincere concern about our nation's schooling. We even got a neat summary of Tory school reform plans. As Cameron put it, he wants to see "choice, diversity and excellence" in the state sector. It was great to hear the Tories' most impressive policy agenda talked about in such straightforward, unequivocal terms.

As for Brown ... well, he was almost a caricature of himself: grey, relentlessly negative and obsessed with the old "cuts vs investment" dividing line. At the beginning of the debate, I thought some of his attacks had a blunt kind of power to them. But as the show wore on, and as it became clear that this was all he had to offer, he faded more and more out of view. By the end, with his closing pitch about the Tories' inheritance tax plans and tax credit cuts, it was unwatchably awful. There was little to distinguish this Brown from the one who murmured gloomily in the back of a car yesterday.

I couldn't have put it better myself. No, I really couldn't :)

++Cameron's Good Start++

"Vote Conservative on Thursday so we can get to work on Friday."

Good that.

Clegg's was white noise and Brown is standing on his record. Big mistake.

Got a feeling this could be Cameron's night...

Update
Cameron, as far as I'm concerned, is winning this debate hands down.

One other thing, it is unbelievable to me that Dimbleby is plugging programmes mid-debate. Who the hell does he think he is?

Bell On Bigotgate

Been too busy for Bigotgate today, more's the pity. But I've had a chance to skim through all the papers now and have been struck by one thing in particular: the schizoid coverage of Brown's epic fubar by the Guardian. Its snob-Left middle class are smelling their own farts (a la South Park's 'smug alert') like crazy over some touchy feely rentapole called Millionovus Poppinova or something's, mortally wounded by the OAP's comments about Eastern Europeans 'flocking' into Britain act. Well, I don't know about you, but I'd call a million or so permanent new members of the community, all from the same origin, a pretty hefty 'flock', wouldn't you?

This is 'grow up, do' territory, but, relentlessly, this stupid person instead drones on and on and on with this fake victimhood horse manure, possibly designed to deflect us from criticising the true villain of this piece: el Gordo. If not - if it is somehow genuine - then in terms of spectacularly missing the point it's hard to trump. The point? The point is that Brown simply lowered not just his, but his entire political party's mask for a moment and revealed in all its stark reality how very, very much the middle class snob-Left (the Toynbee and Harmans of this world, to name but two out of hundreds either in politics or in journalism or both) fear, despise and resent their own core vote. You see this not so much in the article, which is just bluster and drivel, but in the comments below it, which are generally disgusting. If you really can stand it, you can see what I mean here.

On the other hand, though, you have Steve Bell. Artist, a committed Tory basher with plenty of previous and a dyed in the wool lefty, but at least he's got a sense of humour. He hates hypocrisy even more than he loathes David Cameron:

Ah well, home time. But, oh joy unconfined, another debate to look forward to tonight. I do hope Dave and Nicky tease little Gordy about all this.

Mercilessly.

Bigotgate: The Musical

Many things have been said. Many things have yet to be said, but will be said.

But only Guido captures the summary with a beautiful number from another fallen King:



Farewell, Gordon. Peace be with you.

The end.

Gaffe Of The Century

Courtesy of Guy News:

One million Labour supporters have just realised that Gordon Brown is a total asshole, and that they, Brown's 'bigots', mean precisely nothing to him beyond their role as irrelevant voting fodder.

It's the gaffe of this young century. And you know what? I reckon it was a set-up by anti-Brown insiders. That might not do Brown's legendary paranoia much good, but it's wrecked his campaign.

==Update==

And here's Mrs Duffy's reaction. As far as I'm concerned, she comes across as an extremely nice lady. But not to Brown, oh no.

And now he's in her front room pleading for his political career. I'm sure she'll forgive him - she seems to be the forgiving, gentle type, (besides, Brown's goons and minders will no-doubt have checked beforehand).

But I'm absolutely certain the rest of the country will not be quite so receptive to his fake contrition act. We've seen it all before.

Find Foot, Take Aim, FIRE!

See what happens if you're at work and you leave the blogs alone for a couple of hours? You miss something really big.

In this case, the sight of Calamity Gord "loose", as Sir Humphrey might say "in the building" (or, rather, the country) and the subsequent trail of devastation ending in a rail crash that follows soon after.

It's not so much Brown's rudeness and two-faced 'pretending to care' high/heavy handedness with, in this case, an everyday voter just like you or me (well, not like me actually. She is - or maybe come to think of it 'was' - a Labour voter until Brown branded her a 'bigot' behind her back), it's the rock-solid inevitability that if Brown is involved, no matter what it is, wherever it is, something is going to go horribly, horribly wrong.

But this time, Brown has really done it. It's his and his party's whole future that he's finally, permanently sabotaged. Poetic justice that is good for at least one, vital thing: this country's future.

The other parties will be wondering why they've bothered to expend so much time and money on elaborate campaigns and manifestos when all they had to do was sit back and watch the auld wrecker single-handedly alienate nine tenths of the voting public, two thirds of his own party and comprehensively depth charge any hope he might have entertained of becoming a legitimate prime minister. Oh, hang on, I remember why they bothered (especially the Tories) - not because they feel any particular entitlement to power, as with the Labourist Brownite inner circle, but because they genuinely care about righting Brown-Labour's wrongs.

One thing this latest Brown cockup is bad for, though, and extremely irritatingly, is that Brown and his ilk are, as Iain Dale has said, pushing ordinary white working class Labour supporters straight into the arms of the nationalist socialists, the BNP: one final piece of Brownian sabotage for which he should never be forgiven, even in retirement - or death.

It's that serious; he's been that bad.

Where's Darling?

I was surprised to learn from Sky News this morning that the latest general election economics debate, if I heard right, will be between George Osborne, Vince Cable and...er...Peter Mandelson.

Hang on a minute, do they mean Lord Peter "We're all fighting to get re-elected" Mandelson, Business Secretary (among many other hats)? He's not Chancellor of the Exchequer as well these days is he? That's Alistair Darling, isn't it?

Have I missed something? Has Darling come down with an inexplicable stomach complaint (soon after having tea and crumpets with the Evil One yesterday afternoon, no doubt)?

If I haven't missed something, however, but there's no highly suspicious sudden sickness involved (it'd have to be a pretty serious affliction to force you to miss your own debate seven days before the election, wouldn't it?), then we are all entitled to ask a grave question about this very fishy affair: where the hell is Ali?

I think we should be told.

PS: If someone knows, by the way, why Darling has been elbowed, do let me know in the comments.

I wonder if George knows...

==Update==

Not entirely my fault because this wasn't made clear on the news - or I was half asleep - but the three mentioned above are all giving speeches to the Institute of Directors today, not debating, according to Sky.com.

Even so, the question remains: where's Darling!

Or, looking at it another way, why not send Clarke into bat against Mandelson instead of Osborne whose eyes, let's face it, are probably still watering after being on the receiving end of a couple of severe spankings in the past administered with thinly disguised fetishistic relish by the Lord of the Lies.

Ken Clarke, in contrast, owns Mandy's ass.

Dale Destroys Labour's Latest Lies

The latest PEB from Labour represents a new low in hate politics, exploitation and smearing propaganda, even for them. This is it:


Fortunately, Iain Dale, having highlighted it in the first place, in one of the most apoplectic posts I've ever seen him write on his blog in the two years or so I've been reading it, quickly destroys the claims too. A GP has emailed him cataloguing the lies underpinning the most dishonest campaign video in British political history. Read it here.

Well done to him and to Mr Dale for knocking it down before it has a chance to gain any kind of traction. I trust this will be all over the MSM tomorrow - with the story being not only the Labour lies and filth about Conservative health and child support policy, but the abject bankruptcy of the Labour election campaign as a whole.

Mind you, they are totally desperate so they will probably get even worse.

Winning The Argument

It should not be seen as much of a coincidence that on the day Greek debt is downgraded to junk, a poll comes out that lends weight to the view that the Tories are winning the key argument in this general election campaign, the economic argument.

The only game in town is Europe at the moment, with Portugal and, somewhere further down the road, Spain, next on the list for the dreaded rating drop. Whatever the virtues of wonderful and exciting policies such as Michael Gove's brilliant education plan, which has already caused a Damascene conversion of former Fabian research chairman and now editor of the Jewish Chronicle (Martin Bright take note), Stephen Pollard, the vindication of the Tories in at least promising to focus urgently on Britain's own Brown/Labour-caused debt crisis is surely now unchallengeable. Brown and Labour can go on denying the seriousness of the crisis all they want, but that will not make it go away.

And that's clearly why people increasingly are now seeing that they must therefore make Labour go away on May 6th. The stakes have never been higher - for everyone. One thing's for sure, a hung parliament or, heaven forbid, five more years of Brown - though one could and most likely would lead to the other - and we would be the ones in the unfortunate Greeks' shoes next: 16+% government borrowing interest rates, a shattered credit rating and staring down both barrels of a titanic debt default and a bombed out economy.

But the message is finally getting through: Brown or Clegg mean economic crisis and meltdown. And only the Tories offer any hope of averting both.

Temperature's Rising...

This is what I like to see, and thanks to the superb Daily Politics for spotting it and blogging it so fast. Here we have a some real journalistic pressure being brought to bear by Adam Boulton, and even Nick Robinson, who's been marginally better of late.

One thing's for certain, it is, as the DP says, a trainwreck press conference - for Mandelson in particular. You know that when he adopts that menacing, patronising tone and starts telling reporters of Boulton's calibre to 'calm down', he's lost it.

When he was saying 'calm down' to Boulton, Mandelson was talking to himself. Have a peek:

A shocker for Mandy, the pair of Balls either side of him, and for Labour. You call that 'losing the plot'. More please!

Cyanide On The Doorstep

Eight More Days...

Rachel Sylvester, late of the Telegraph, is in fine form this morning in her Times column. Her article, headlined "Labour is learning it does not have the right to exist", speculating on the death of Labour as a dominant political force in Britain, is well worth the read.

It's also notable for a quote in amongst its insightful commentary from a Labour Party candidate, which sort of sums up their main problem:

“Gordon is cyanide on the doorstep,” says one candidate from the front line of the campaign in what was once — but is no longer — a rock-solid Labour seat. But parties get the leaders they deserve and Labour too is behaving as if it has run out of steam and ideas.

You do get the leader you deserve, and in this case, because they didn't have the guts to stand up to him when he stole the Labour party in a carefully orchestrated, long-planned palace coup, becoming anointed leader and unelected prime minister, and because they didn't have the guts to dispose of him when it was clear just how much of a total political liability he was not long afterwards, they are now going down hard with him, perhaps for a generation or more - and fully deserve that destiny, which they brought upon themselves.

“Gordon Brown is Labour’s worst leader ever,” another government minister says, according to Sylvester.

Yes, and it's the worst government and collection of MPs ever that put him there.

Sharpening The Message

Guido has highlighted a new, public-sourced, 'anti-politics' (whatever that actually means - politics is politics isn't it?) anti-some other stuff attack page designed to reveal just how major and sustained a disaster the Brown years have been for Britain.

LabourVision.TV launches tomorrow – a crowd sourced effort to produce an online anti-party, anti-political election broadcast. Details revealed tomorrow of how your video can be part of Gordon – the Disaster Movie premiering on May Day. The bar is high. Come back tomorrow…

The page can be found at the link in the quote and will be well worth a visit, not least because we have the tantalising prospect of the May Day movie, coming soon to a blog near you.

If this outstanding first effort is anything to go on, the results of this project could be pretty damaging for an already severely wounded Brown-Labour campaign.



I think this is what you call 'sharpening the message' and hats off to Guido for doing it. Tory campaign HQ should take note.

Toddler Tax? What About Brown's Baby Tax

All people need to know, and all the Tories need to do to counter this latest bit of lying Labour misrepresentation, is to remind them that every baby born for a generation or more will be in debt, from birth, to the tune of £32,000 and quickly rising (see counter at the bottom of this blog). The excellent Tory poster from January 2009 is now that far out of date. In 15 months, Brown's baby bill's nearly doubled.

It's Brown's baby tax, created as a consequence of his crazy scorched earth, debt-fueled spending spree after his mega-bust, and it's one of many reasons why he deserves nothing less than the total political oblivion to which the nation's about to consign him. And good riddance.

And let's hear no more pathetic, desperate lies about some phantom Tory 'toddler tax'.

There's only one conclusion worth reaching in this general election, and it's becoming clearer to people by the minute: it's time for the Tories to come in and clear up another fine Labour crisis. Failing that, it's just time for Brown to go.

A Few Lefties Make Me Laugh; Dave Miliband's Not One Of Them

Yes, one or two - but only sometimes. This effort from Guardian 'toonist Martin Rowson I thought was pretty good, although it might still be a bit too soon to include the pontiff, given the scale of the Foreign Office cluster-fluff with the email scandal. By the way, on that, isn't this a clear test of the principle of Ministerial Responsibility? "Ministerial what?" I hear you say. Yes, Ministerial Responsibility - a novel idea from yesteryear that meant ministers took responsibility for whatever happened in their own departments, warts, (23-year old, leftie Oxbridge piss artist uncivil servants) and all.

In the past - pre-Nulab, you might say - with a diplomatic incident as serious as this one, the minister would almost certainly have had to consider his position. Some would have gone and some would have tried to hang on. You know, the Carrington/Prior dilemma. Point is, all would have considered it, given the gravity of the offence. In Carrington's case, with the Falkland's in 1982, he chose to go; Prior (and in-so-doing some might say he set a precedent) on the Maze escapes in '83, refused. But both considered it, and that's the clincher.

What are the chances of that ever happening with one of this gang of undignified, amoral parasites? Miliband, resign! The thought would never have even crossed his mind. He didn't even bother to speak out about it initially - that was left to Jim Murphy (one Labourist minister I actually do - shock horror - have a bit of time for) who's not even in the department, (unless the Scottish Office is part of the FCO these days and I hadn't noticed).

But that's the point: not the resignation, but the principle. That the thought never crossed Miliband's mind speaks directly to his contempt for the principle by which he was supposed to abide as a minister of the Crown; the behaviour of the boy civil servant and his superiors to a culture of general contempt in the entire ministry, possibly the entire government.

What is more, this poisonous Labour decadence has seeped into many, many other facets of British public life, including most of its institutions. The scandal over the papal email merely serves further to highlight that tragic reality. Hell, Miliband probably thought the note was funny.

But there is an antidote to the poison on May 6th. Yeah, you guessed it: vote Conservative.

This Is How It Ends...

Not with a bang, with a bust-up.

The anti-Brown press - which is just about all of it, isn't it? - is turning the screw on Labour today. Apart from the Mirror, of course, but no one reads that, there are reports coming in all over the place of recriminations beginning for what has been a terrible Labour election campaign, of splits between several factions appearing and of maneuvering behind the scenes to replace Brown already starting.

So far, we have seen Brown flip flop over the Liberal Democrats in two - let's be honest for a minute here - generally dreadful TV debates for him, and during which he looked old and tired set against a pair of fresh-faced, would-be political assassins standing nearby, looking like peas in a coalition. Forget about what Brown said - (which was heard-it-all-before tractor stats in the main anyway) - it's how he looked that counted. And he looked awful.

But is his problem really that superficial? Is it really a case of no style, just substance? Well, of course not. He does have a style of sorts, it's just not a particularly pleasant one that usually involves swearing at people off camera and growling like some statistic-obsessed, gummy old circus lion while on it. Also, "style" - which I assume in this case means an awareness of the needs for certain kinds of presentational and rhetorical skills to communicate a message forcefully but attractively - does not denote superficiality, quite the opposite in fact. So no, Brown's problem is not just that he lacks the charisma or charm of a Cameron, it's that he lacks the debating skills, too. That's a talent gap and one that Clegg does not share with him, as we have learned.

It's not just Brown who's been shown-up in his true light- hiding from the public throughout his so-called campaign, talking to small rooms full of T-shirt-wearing die-hard Labour loyalists, leaving TV viewers with the impression that he's actually talking to himself - using an autocue(!) - it's the disunited team full of second raters behind him too. What twit put Ed Miliband in charge of the manifesto? What fool put Peter "Divide and Rule" Mandelson in charge of party unity? What idiot put wee Dougie Alexander in charge of the coffee and cream cakes? That is a role call of mediocrity if ever I saw one ( have I got those roles right? They seem to change so often these days). And Labour has them coming out of its ears and we're fed up to the back teeth with them.

Now, I know you will disagree with me about Mandelson, but before you do, just think very carefully and ask yourself what, exactly, he has achieved in his time in office that warrants the kind of respect and lavish praise he receives all the time? Is it because people are frightened about what he'll do to them if they don't toe his line? Of course it is. But to me, that's no measure of political success - or of great service to your country. No, poisonous he may be, and an effective Labour party heavy and paid-up Euro goon too, but true statesman he ain't and never will be. Remember, the answer to all of the above "What idiot..." questions is not just "Gordon Brown", it's "Peter Mandelson", too. Seems he slithers out from under the charge of incompetence, though, because that's what he does. Brown, fortunately, doesn't. The full tidal wave of disapproval is about to reach landfall and swallow him up, before spitting him out hundreds of miles from Number 10. Mandelson already has a lifeboat standing by, with the EU logo stamped all over it.

It's hard to tell how bad this defeat will be for Labour. Just like Boris Johnson, I hope it is one of those earthquake moments where their deceit, mediocrity, anti-democratic behaviour and general, total failure leads to their final demise, with the Lib Dems taking over the mantle of official Opposition to a Conservative government with a working majority. One thing is pretty clear to me: the final leaders' debate is an irrelevance. It's sort of like the final Test in a dead rubber. You go to see it because you like the sport, and someone might do something interesting. But nothing can change the fact that (from Brown's perspective) the series has already gone. In other words, once again, I think the polls are flattering them and I firmly believe the defeat for Labour will be shattering.

For forcing the unelected, unelectable, utter disaster Brown on us for three years, that would be less than Labour deserves. As it is, they've run out of ideas and run out of options. All we will see from here until election day is the sad old fraud making bigger and bigger speeches in front of smaller and smaller rooms of loyalists, perhaps even after the election is over and the counts have come in. But he'll keep on going, not willing to believe that the game is finished and the crowd's gone home. Someone from Sky News watches on a monitor; the live feed was pulled hours ago. The producer signals to the cameramen to get ready to pack up - it's time to go - as he reaches down and flicks the switch on the monitor and, for the last time, turns Brown off. Click.

And then he was gone.

Why A Hung Parliament Would Be Bad, Part 74

A truly excellent, but entirely unnerving, article by retired senior civil servant and Labour Party member, Brian Barder, on the subject of the new procedures drawn up by the Cabinet Secretary, or "rule book", appeared on his blog a couple of days ago, and has just popped up on LabourLost.org. It's a long, comprehensive piece that discusses not only the post-war history of this, as he calls it rather refreshingly, "anomolous" outcome, but also explores several possible what-if scenarios in the event of its happening again, and how the new rules will work.

Simply put, if you are a Conservative supporter, the results would all be bad. The likelihood of Brown resigning as Prime Minister after the election are minimal, even if his party is second biggest in the House of Commons. In attempting to create "stability", these new codifications of previously unwritten constitutional practices have in my opinion severely skewed the system in favour of the incumbent. Simply put, if my understanding of the piece is correct, should a hung parliament of one form or another be the outcome in which Nick Clegg held the balance of power, there would be no legal or even moral obligation for Brown to resign, so Clegg would be forced to bring down the Labour government by refusing to endorse the Queen's Speech. This would trigger another general election which, you have to think, would hardly be in the Liberal Democrat's best interest. The chances are, therefore, that Clegg would do a deal with Brown and Brown would continue as Prime Minister for the time being, despite having a smaller share of the vote than the Conservative Party. As Mr Barder says:

Thus the logic of the situation may virtually force Clegg to accept any offer from Brown either to join a Labour-LibDem coalition, with a few seats in the coalition Cabinet for Clegg, Cable and one or two others, giving them considerable influence on government policy, but with an inescapable obligation to support some Labour-inspired policies that the LibDems would prefer to oppose; or alternatively to give a conditional promise not to vote against the (Labour) Queen’s Speech or against the Labour government in a vote of confidence provided that certain basic conditions were met by Brown. If that happened, there would be no opening for Cameron to be invited to try to form a government since the Brown government would continue in office without interruption. Of course this would mean the LibDems facing a storm of bitter invective for having kept an unpopular Brown administration in office despite Labour having ‘lost’ the election. But the alternative — ejecting a broadly like-minded centre-left government from office and installing a potentially far-right Tory government in its place — might be even more unpalatable for grass-roots LibDem members and supporters.

Of course, this is all moot, (and the description of the Tory Party as "far right" is ridiculous), but the point is, and Barder goes to some lengths to emphasise it, it is a very real possiblity if current polls are to be believed. The chances of Guido's "Change Coalition" ever happening, even it was desirable (which it absolutely isn't), are tiny, because the new written rules just won't allow it. The system, accidentally or otherwise, has been rigged.

My own view is that the polls are wrong and none of this will happen because there won't be a hung parliament. However, if it did happen the consequences for the country would be terrible. We would be in uncharted territory with a storm front of popular unrest and economic disruption on the near horizon (and that's the only message the Tories need send to the electorate on the subject, too).

I'm watching Sky News just now and they are speculating on this very issue, with that most dishonest of privileged socialists, Polly Toynbee, spinning this madly as some sort of political panacea. Tim Montgomerie, by contrast, has countered with the best set of arguments against this disastrous arrangement I've heard from a Tory yet. He says, in summary, that a new government and a fresh start can only be achieved one way, by voting Conservative.

However, what's now clear, at least to me, is that the Labour Party generally, and Brown in particular, think they have found a way out of their appalling political pickle and a way to cling on to power. What is more, it's also now clear beyond any shadow of a doubt, a vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote for Gordon Brown. It's also a vote for PR, a permanent centre-left, vague, ineffectual, corrupt "progressive" coalition, with full EU integration and the Euro coming close on its heals. That would be the price of a LibDems/Labour stitch-up, with five more years of Gordon Brown into the bargain just to complete the hideous, Goya-esque image. It is terrifying.

If you need any further evidence for why a hung parliament would be a very, very bad thing in every way conceivable, then you must be a Lib Dem or a Labourist, in which case you should take a long, hard look in the mirror and wonder whether something as immoral as this is a price worth paying for power. If you think it is, then you're already a lost cause.

If not, then solve the problem before it starts. On Election Day, vote Tory!

Bloasis

All this talk of coalitions, especially what I think is the outrageous idea of Lib-Con pact - it's dishonest, stupid and is starting to annoy me. The Tories must aim for outright victory in the general election and nothing else. Entertaining speculation of hung parliaments can lead to a self-fulfilling prophesy. They should leave all that nonsense to the desperate, collapsing Labourists, the fantasist Cleggians and the media, for whom this trope maintains audience interest and nowt else.

On the subject, I thought this Sunday Times leader was rather witty, and pretty telling too, in its own way:

What would coalition government be like in Britain? We’ve had no real experience of so-called unity government since the second world war, so it might help to consider how coalition would work in other areas of British life.
Take Arsenal, facing yet another trophy-free season in the Premier League. Wouldn’t they be so much more successful in coalition with Tottenham, their deadly rivals? Footballers are professionals, or so they always insist. Somehow they’d make Arsenal Hotspur work on the pitch.
As in politics, it’s the grassroots support that’s the problem: like expecting Richard Dawkins and the Pope to collaborate on a revision of the Gospels. Would a merger between Oasis and Blur have produced anything other than a punch-up? Would you watch French & Pace, or would you prefer Hale & Saunders? Get used to it, because this is what we can look forward to in the coming months: the politics of Ant & Stacey. Or Gavin & Dec. Marks & Q, B & Spencer, Morecambe and Fry ...

Do any other unlikely, bizarre or unnatural coalitions spring to anyone's mind? How about cats and dogs. What would that produce? A dot? A dat? A cog??

Point being, Britain can well do without a government of Conservative Democrats, or whatever other mutant, non-viable political organism that might emerge from a split vote and deadlock. If there is no decision on May 6th, the answer is not a coaltion with small parties with small shares of the vote and a small number of seats wielding disproportionate amounts of influence. The answer is another election. We believe in strong, decisive government in this country, not the kind of stitch-up, back room compromises of 1974, that led to stagflation, union militancy, the collapse of the pound, bankruptcy and a humiliating bailout by the IMF.

There's a simple way to skip that false step and miss out those lost years of drifting and decay this time around.

Vote Conservative on May 6th. Simples!

Nostaligia, 1996

This must be the tenth time I've posted this vid over the past year or so. Go figure.



This (Labour government) has been around a very long time, and their time is very nearly through.

But ours isn't. Our time is just starting.

You might not want a new Conservative government, but you, we and everyone else in Britain desperately needs one.

I feel it my duty to try to pass that on.

Why We Vote

General Sir Richard Dannatt, whom the Labour party attempted to smear not that long ago just because he disagreed with them, has written a piece for tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph that resonates. In it, not only does he show us (diplomatically) what's gone so horribly wrong with defence and foreign policy management under Labour, he reminds us why nailing your colours to a particular mast is so vital when a general election comes around. This last part of his wise words is especially telling:

...what if the electorate were to decide that, with the political class discredited through their abuse of their own remuneration system, they will not vote at all, or will use that vote to punish all and sundry? What message would that send to our young people on the front line in Afghanistan risking life and limb for our security? It says: we actually quite like the idea of those votes that are cast producing no clear answer – but meanwhile, you go on risking your all so we can sit at home doing nothing and deciding nothing. Frankly, we owe it to ourselves and to our servicemen and women to do better.

Here here. It seems to me that General Dannatt also suggests a point that, while wrongly perceived these days as somehow old-fashioned, is nevertheless more significant now than it's ever been: a vote is a precious thing, and to use it when the time comes isn't just a right, it's a duty. And you must vote according to what you believe is in the best interests of your country, and not according to some kind of inherited political prejudice and certainly not because you think you're 'angry with the system'.

If you have any doubts, (and I no longer do), about the party to which you should lend your vote, then you should be aware that the party that best fits Dannatt's criteria for honest, patriotic voting is, currently, the Conservative Party. And this is no time for a hung parliament.

Right, having uttered all that well-intentioned claptrap, I would however like to add that wherever you are, in this real world, any chance that you get to kick Labour as hard as you can, take it. They deserve to be annihilated and, after all, ultimately that's what voting's really for. I admire and aspire to high-minded democratic principles and all that as much as the next knighted general. But, for our nation today, we all must vote and, if necessary, vote dirty. First to get rid of Brown, second to install a strong government. You can't do that by voting Lib Dem, Libertarian or UKIP. That's just true.

And even if, on the face of it, his standards seem unreachably high, I think that between the lines, that's precisely what Dannatt is saying.

So well said he!

One Minute Of Labour

The latest Tory viral attack ad that popped into my inbox a few minutes ago, connected to a pretty powerful campaign summary signed by George Osborne, is damn good. But it's damn scary too.



Anyone contemplating voting for Brown - or that Clegg person (which could amount to virtually the same thing in that it would split the vote and lead to a hung parliament, possibly with Brown still in power - and still unelected) - should examine these facts very closely. And then vote Tory. Every minute Brown-Labour remain in charge of anything is another minute of calamity for Britain. That's a powerful reality.

Btw: is that Christopher Ecclestone doing the voiceover? Didn't know he was one of the honest. If it is, good on him.

Brown Thanks The Patients

It's difficult to sit through a Brown speech at the best of times, but the one he's just making in Corby, another sad, preaching to the dwindling converted effort, is so notably bad that I felt it was worth a post. Oh, and compare and contrast: Brown relying on three autocues and a heavily spun speech, speaking to small room of carefully chosen party members, Cameron earlier speaking virtually off the cuff in the open air to large crowd of people and engaging them in the debate, shirt sleave order.

Anyway, first, the lies. Brown says the Tories would cut the NHS, and apparently his goons trotted out Dan Hannan's ancient interviews and speeches on how we can solve the problem of the bottomless pit that nationalised health care has become under Brown as evidence of an evil Tory plot. This is an out and out, barefaced lie, of course. Rightly or wrongly, the Tories have ringfenced health spending. It's in the manifesto. But maybe the print's too small for Brown to read - or, more likely, he just doesn't care because it doesn't fit with his divisive, perfidious Brownian narrative.

Second, his tax on jobs. As many in the saner parts of the mainstream media have said, not ramping up National Insurance taxation means you're leaving 6Bn quid in the economy. The tax on jobs means removing badly needed capital from the productive bit of the economy. I genuinely believe that in the world of Brownomics - the economics of mismanagement and collapse, of debt-fueled booms and gargantuan busts - this simple reality is not comprehended.

Finally, the bizarre. Early in the trainwreck speech, when he was going through his usual politbureau-style list of disingenuous 'thank-yous' (cue applause from the roomful of activists - and Devon Malcolm, oddly), he decided to thank, er, the patients.

Huh? What for? For being ill?

After all is said and done, and all the reams written about this weird man, I've finally come to the earth-shattering conclusion that, simply put, Gordon Brown is definitely bonkers.

St George's Day 2010

Best wishes to one and all back in merry England on a stunningly beautiful day (at least in South Wales :)

Labour's Latest Campaign Tactic: Just Sick

A lame one liner from Brown in the debate was the first sign that Labour's campaign troglodytes have, quite simply - and completely - lost the plot. I've seen this image on a couple of blogs now this evening. I dismissed it, though, thinking it must be just another Toryish blogger agitprop spoof. Not so. A little trip to Labour.org reveals that, yes, believe it or not (and I still can't believe it), it's for real.

Brown said during the EU bit of the debate: "They'll turn Great Britain into Little Britain". Just another pathetic, throwaway Brownist soundbite and, as always, instantly forgettable. You would think.

But no. Know this: it wasn't just a prepared line for Brown to chuck in. It's part of what looks like a new, concerted campaign tactic, with the diabolically unethical picture below as its visual support:

This was published hours before the debate. Given the hideousness of the image, not least because of Cameron's experience as a father caring for a severely disabled son (now sadly deceased), but also its exploitation generally of disability for cynical political purposes, it's just incomprehensibly sick - and the Labour party must be held to account for it. Severely.

You have to ask, what kind of thought processes are at work in the creation of a thing as brutally horrible as this? Damaged ones, I would say. Very damaged.

Did Brown not know about this either? He said the line in the debate, so one should conclude that, just like with his leaflet smear campaign against the Tories and the SNP, he knew full well about it.

That alone should be enough to bury him in totally justified, universal condemnation.

And I thought we'd seen the worst of him, the lowest.

Not yet, it seems.

=Update=
And...pulled. Don't expect we'll be seeing that particular line of attack again from the corrupt Labourists (a couple of whom were stupid enough to leave comments here). Good, but the harm to what's left of their reputations - and to the disabled - has been done. The grim last gasps of a heartless regime, and party, rotten to the core.

Second Debate Update

It matters not what I say here, or my impressions. The media are already in the process of spinning the living daylights out of what happened. So who 'won' is still in the hands of the opinion formers. How I loathe them.

For the record, I thought Cameron started off quite poorly in a very poor debate with even poorer questions ("Is the Pope a Catholic? And do you think he should be?"), but then, as the event wore tediously on, he came alive and finally showed some genuine passion, cornering Brown on smears (no irony there) and fisking Clegg on his pretty creepy immigration non-policy.

My view? A clear win for Cameron, over the cliff for Clegg and another trainwreck for Brown (to whom no one is now listening, including his own senior ministers).

The media view? Probably a narrow win for Cameron, an end to the Clegg surge nonsense - and a fair shocker for Brown. So that's something.

But, and this, to me, is the important thing, the momentum in this election is now with David Cameron after an assured performance, on balance, and one that will give floating voters confidence in him and in the Conservatives. That's good.

==Update==
YouGov poll on Sky: Cameron 36%, Clegg 32% and Brown (amazingly) 29%

So I was right about the media thing, sort of, then

Campbell lying saying desperately now: "Brown was excellent, I don't care what your poll says".

So now we know: Brown lost by a country mile.

Right Target, Wrong Ammo

If you want to take out a troublesome enemy tank, in this case an obsolete knockoff Russian T62 (also known as the Liberal Mk1 Main Battlebus), you don't use a bunch of tracer bullets. However accurate the rounds might be, and however many you loose, not only are they simply going to bounce off the turret of the lumbering, sputtering war machine (in this case the 360 degree swivelling Nick Clegg), they will give away your position too. The newspapers that profess a bluish bent have done just that with their suspiciously timed, well-aimed but poorly armed, poorly co-ordinated full frontal assault. Over the top, chaps!

No, what you need to do, tactically, is to bide your time, choose the correct ordnance and then open fire with the radar-guided, state of the art heavy guns. A battery of that nature would be (would have been/will be?) decisive; the fireworks delightful and the result, devastating. So Iain Dale and John Ward are dead right in their assessment, that the attack was ill-conceived, will backfire and the Tories should have nothing to do with it.

Having said that, I recognise the possibility that a charge of hypocrisy might be coming my way. Well, so what? It would be unfounded. What I deposit here is personal opinion. And I stand by my opinion that nothing has happened to alter my long-held view that Nick Clegg is a two-faced, overhyped, establishment lightweight that no one in their right mind should ever consider as prime ministerial material. He's benefited from the anti-politics thang, for sure, and the TV media's desire for a Close Run Thing (hung parliaments mean higher ratings), but that's it. On policy he's nowhere. At least with Labour you just have universally bad ideas, most of which have been discredited already after thirteen lost years, and involve, if we were to have to suffer five more lost years of them, plunging an increasingly authoritarian UK into social and economic oblivion.

With Clegg's Libdums, you get either conflicting policies, badly thought-out policies, unfundable policies or policies (and these are the really interesting ones) that will lead us to being kicked off the UN Security Council, subsumed by a federal EU and relegated to third rate power status (see Simon Hughes). I'm not entirely certain anyone in this country is quite ready for any of that particular brand of 'change', or ever will be.

But it's up to the Tories, and the pisspoor papers (if they can get their heads out of their collective fundaments) to make people see that.

PS:
One online rag really does provide a case in point:

Nick Clegg dossier reveals his Martian roots

DAS BUNKER, Whopping, Tuesday (MSBBC) — Your Super Soaraway SUN has found the blueprint for Nick Clegg’s top-secret TV debate strategy in the back of a CAB, revealing he is a MARTIAN INVADER.

It reveals the Lib Dem leader STOLE DNA from David Cameron to DUPLICATE his style and cover Britain in a ROBOT ARMY OF CLEGGS, with BlackBerrys to be installed in all citizens.

“It’s very SLOPPY to just leave it in my CAB in a locked and alarmed SUITCASE,” said the cab driver, Andy Coulson,” and I thought people should know. That’s why I SOLD it to The Sun.”

Clegg DISGRACED himself in the television debate last Thursday, winning a mere 37% in BIASED COMMUNIST POLLS, while TORY SUPERSTAR Dave “Dave” Cameron topped the charts with a SURGE to 31% — despite foolish commentators claiming Clegg was less terrible than GORDON BROWN attempting to SMILE or the picture of DAVE CAMERON someone had PHOTOSHOPPED onto the screen.

“I used my PSYCHIC POWERS to talk to ADOLF HITLER after the debate and he would DEFINITELY vote Lib Dem now,” reveals luscious, pouting MYSTIC MEG in her political opinion column on Page 3 today.

The Tories have responded by DISTANCING themselves from the Liberal Democrats’ WASHED-UP, SOCIALIST POLICIES and put out new posters blaming the recession on the people responsible: POLISH ASYLUM TERRORISTS on THE DOLE.

“The Conservative Home web forum got out MS Paint and came up with some great stuff,” said Tory webmaster Andy Coulson. “Though they thought we should distance ourselves from those WISHY-WASHY, NUT-CUTLET-EATING LIBERALS at the Daily Mail, who are SOFT ON VOLCANOES and soft on the CAUSES of volcanoes.”

An article in the Völkischer Beobachter on Sunday by Andy Coulson REVEALED Clegg’s SPANISH wife, RUSSIAN grandfather and MARTIAN allegiance, and how he would definitely fail a proper Tory BRITISHNESS test.

“Fuck,” said Rupert Murdoch, speaking to his editors about the ACTUAL poll numbers.

I mean, shocking scaremongering!

+Update+

This is what Clegg really said (just in the spirit of accuracy, you understand - no smearist I):

“Watching Germany rise from its knees after the war and become a vastly more prosperous nation has not been easy on the febrile British psyche.”

“All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still.”

“A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. We need to be put back in our place.”

Hmm. The change we need.

Only The Tories Are Listening to Parents

Something struck me yesterday about that whole SATS hoo haa, with education unions about to boycott them, and it was this. In all the news coverage that I saw, not one reporter had thought to ask any of the people who really do count when it comes to education, namely, the 'customers': parents and children. The teachers' and Heads' views are all very well and the benefits or deficiencies of SATS testing is still very much moot.

What's unacceptable is the idea that teachers and Heads, as much as the (Labour) politicians themselves, believe that they can just do what they like without even considering the possibility that the one group they should be consulting, parents (and children, to a certain extent, although I have a fairly old-fashioned view about pupil power), should be sounded-out.

The letter to the Guardian today signed by 650 parents groups, criticising the excruciating Balls and his Labour chums for rubbishing Tory plans for the deregulation of the entire school system, will prove this reality to every sane person. Every sane person, that is, apart from the people who really do need to be re-educated: teachers, Heads and socialists (are those terms tautological?). The Spectator has written something good about this.

But there are two other things that this letter proves that are just as significant:

1) Parents will not be ignored any more and will have their say on these matters, and demand that their right to choose the educational future of their children is respected, and whether agenda-driven, 'we know best' educators (believe me, they don't), officials and politicos like it or not.

2) The Tories have been listening for a long time, and Michael Gove has created a plan that in my view takes a manifesto to that happy place that is so often so hard to reach: a policy that is affordable, popular and right.

The Tories have won the argument on education. Let's hope they win the argument on running the rest of the country too.

I still believe they will, not least because they deserve to, but also because I believe that with policies like this one, they will convince enough people of this reality so they agree with me.

We'll see.

The Cable Guy

What a day. Not one minute to myself. Every second of it belonged to The Man. However, I'm plodding on regardless, inspired by that tireless campaigner for truth, justice, and the Cameron way, Ollie Cromwell, who's blogged the video of a superstar slapdown by Andrew Neil of the Cable guy, as edited by Guy News.

I'm not gonna embed it here. Go to Ollie's awesome Red Rag site (which puts mine rightly to shame) to see it. Click on this link.

The demolition of the fraud Cable is a wonderful thing to behold.

The Liberal Mystery Tour

Cleggmania grips Britain!



Far out man! Scrap the Bomb! LSD rules! "Liberal Sychedelic (sic) Democrats". Clegg's bigger than Jesus, man! Gotta grow a beard, dude. And get some sandals. Free love!

(Good effort from one of Guido's imaginative minions.)

Make Your Mind Up

Please, please promise these people you will get out and vote. Then, perhaps, they'll never make a video like this one again! You can thank Iain Dale for it.

Honestly though? I think it's awful, silly and excruciatingly camp, but has a very sound message about supporting your democracy - and looked like a lot of fun to make, too.

Wonderfully British.

BBC Over-Exposure of Clegg?

Deja Vu

Today, like every other weekday, began with the usual routine for me: up at around 6.30; ablutions; cup of coffee; quick spin of the hound; 7.30am sharp, Liberal Democrat News conference on three BBC channels....

Hang on. What was that last one again? A Liberal Democrat News Conference. Every damn morning I'm faced not with the latest news about scary ash clouds not damaging 747s at all but still closing down the country, but with Nick "My Dad's Richer Than Dave's Dad" Clegg banging on about hopeless Libdum 'policies' (today it was the turn of the bankers. Vince wasn't there, though. Curious, that). He gets a full half hour of free airtime from the BBC every morning just when most people will be checking out the news, too.

I did what I usually do, seeing as I haven't heard anything fresh, or worthwhile, from the Libdums for months, and switched back to the Murdoch channel. They don't carry it - usually. But shock horror! There he was again! Trotting out his endless, codified claptrap once more, relentlessly. To be fair, though, Sky only aired the first bit (praise the Lord).

But the BBC. Sheesh! They've got a nerve. If you only watched the BBC's news coverage, and only in the mornings, you would be forgiven for thinking the Libdums were the only party in the country. So why is the Beeb blatantly backing the yellows now? Well, not only are they biased, but they're not even that bothered about hiding it any more - perhaps as this latest scandal about a now-suspended BBC 'complaints' manager (and Labour candidate) partly demonstrates. It seems their tiresomely - and tirelessly - left wing editors and managers have finally decided that Labour can't win, so, with brazen cynicism, they're going to try to make sure that if they can't have their beloved party, they'll make it as hard as possible for the Tories to form a government by splitting the vote.

Sound crazy? Just remember who we're dealing with here. They despise the Tories quite a lot more than they despise the Liberals, half of whom are 'social democrats' (socialists) as it is. Whatever the ins and outs of it, and I doubt it's a conspiracy, but it is undoubtedly an attitude, the BBC is now buying into the hung parliament trope (or 'balanced' parliament, as it was referred to on the Today programme by one of the presenters this morning, no doubt in deference to Alex Salmond), and buying in big style.

This only annoys me slightly less than shutting down the entire UK's aviation industry because the Met Office and the EU says we have to. I put the BBC into the same category as those two menaces to a free and productive society.

But before we put all the BBC chiefs up against the wall, can't we just have a little less of the Libdums? Pretty please? It's getting beyond a joke.

Or is there an argument for letting Clegg get overexposed, so everyone can eventually see him for the pseudo-socialist, public school-educated airhead that he really is? And how utterly shallow and confused the party he leads is in reality, too? Interesting conundrum to me, that.

EUseless!

Not Iceland - This ash is dangerous

So the Telegraph is reporting what quite a number of stranded holiday makers have no doubt suspected for quite a while, namely that the EU organisation that plunged the entire continent into the pre-Wright brothers era so emphatically was basing its decision on yet another dodgy Met Office computer model. As the chairman of the International Air Transport Association, Giovanni Bisignani, told Radio Four earlier on, "This is a European Embarrassment and European Mess".

Only, he didn't mean that exactly. What he meant, precisely, is that this is an EU embarrassment and an EU mess that is rapidly developing into a full-blown EU disaster. Why, then, exactly, is our equally useless, soon-to-be-booted-out government sitting on its backside listening to this horse manure about engine-devouring ash, which has now pretty much been proved as just that, equine effluent, and not simply saying, "Up yours, Delores, our planes go up!"?

Answer? Obvious. Aside from being useless, they couldn't even do it if they wanted to. The ban was made possible by treaty and as such is legally binding, meaning that anyone breaching it, from any nation, could be fined by the EU to the tune of millions and without any democratically elected national government being able to stop it short of dropping out of the EU or going to war.

The EU, in its infinite stupidity has, thanks to its epic bureaucratic blundering, turned a minor volcanic eruption in a peripheral European nation into a crisis the scale of which can scarcely be conceived. Remember, closing Europe down directly affects the lives of 400 million people 'home' and indirectly the entire globe, one way or another. "Monumental" doesn't begin to describe it. But it certainly doesn't auger well for Britain's future if we permit a repetition. But how do we avoid a repetition, I hear you ask, when Gordon Brown has signed away our right to object without even consulting us, probably at the behest of the most dishonest man in the entire world, Peter "Lord" Mandelson?

Hmm, well now, I would imagine we could avoid a repetition, at least in Britain, by reclaiming control of our own government, regulatory systems, businesses or, at the very least, next time there's a lunatic, suicidal order from the EU, to, say, shut down the entire electricity grid of Europe because a lousy CICO computer model from the bloody Met Office has told them that there's a 34% probability that all the pylons are about to come alive and eat us all, they just say NO!

Meanwhile, I watch with increasing suspicion as our airline industry is made to implode as a result of bad science and even worse supranational, unelected government, the reaction of the alarmist lobby. You have Plane Stupid, the watermelon, single issue fanatics and misfit band of dropouts, layabouts, anarchists and other assorted activist oddballs who want to send us all back into the 14th century - not that I have anything against the 14th Century, I just don't want to live there - starting with the abolition of flight. As you might imagine, they're loving this:

So, Eyjafjallajokull, you may have an unpronounceable name and an odd smell, but nonetheless we thank you for giving us a brief glimpse of life without planes. And for demonstrating that, despite what the aviation industry would like to have us believe, a world without air travel could well be a very happy place indeed.

For you maybe. But then you're a weirdo so forgive me if I ignore you from now on. Ordinary people like to use aeroplanes and they like to travel. Air travel does not harm the environment (although poorly located airports, like Heathrow, certainly do). It's all in your imagination, hairy man, stirred up into a fever by that self-same, God awful menace of a Met Office, with its useless modelling and man made warmist obsessions. Hang on a minute, Met Office gives a warning based on dodgy science to unanswerable EU body with power to shut down every airport and ground every plane on the entire continent. All aircraft are grounded. Enviro-fascists everywhere united in common approval for the Met Office's and the EU's responsible opportunism in taking full advantage of a little volcanic ash and enabling what Copenhagen could never do, bring the aviation industry, already weakened by Brown's bust, to its knees. Good heavens, I never thought they had it in them.

Well, that's the point, they don't. Between them, the EU, the Met Office and AGW nutjobs who now infest them all, couldn't organise a conspiracy of that complexity in the space of a couple of days. No, all the Met Office was, as usual, is incompetent. All that Brown did, as usual, was dither.

And all the EU is, always and forever, is completely useless - catastrophically and expensively so.

Anyone who wants five more years of Brown so he can complete the process of transforming this country into the arse end of the EU donkey wants his head examining. But this is exactly what you'll get, and more, if you vote for the Labourists or, for that matter, the Libdums. I suppose these losers all have one thing in common: all they're interested in is their own, pathetic political agendas, not the interests or the desires of the people, whether of the UK or of "Europe".

Oh Dave, Dave, if only you'd promised that referendum. The election would be over by now, and you'd be in Downing St sticking two fingers up to the EU and getting our planes flying. I trust. Why, oh why? I'll always be pondering that one right up until the day I pass on through the great ash cloud in the sky to the heavens beyond (go on holiday to Thailand, in other words, assuming we still have an aviation industry left by then).

Er, that's enough. (I'm just putting off doing some real work ;)

Hometime, I think!

Some Things Never Change

I agree with Guido Fawkes that some things never change, so for the Conservative party not to be offering significant tax breaks, while the Libdums laughably are (however dishonestly) does indeed look like a spectacular own-goal. Guido goes further, though, and lays blame for the strategic error, in this case firmly at the door of Danny Finkelstein, erstwhile election mastermind and now well-known Times bloggist who delivered for the Tories an extremely well-managed, crushing defeat. As Guido says:

Danny Finkelstein and Guido had a bit of Twitter spat about this last night. Guido holds Fink responsible for accepting the Balls/Brown dividing lines and helping to foist on the Tories their “no tax cuts” position. A policy position that Guido sees as cowardice in the face of the enemy.

Quite. People are following the money. Some things really do never change, even in this time of what we are being led to believe is some sort of new era of a woolly-headed progressive consensus. The people, it seems, disagree. You'd think "Conservatives" would be sensitive to that. Real ones would - and are.