Blah Blah Flowers

ID cards haven't been issued yet and already they can be cloned in under a quarter of an hour.

Labels: Government, ID cards, Labour, privacy

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resign.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to declassify scientology as a reglion. I think ze possibly means religion.

Labels: Gordon Brown, Labour, petitions, Scientology

The recent spate of knife murders obviously demands a response from the government that is wise and thoughtful, but while we wait for that let's go for the knee-jerk headline-grabber that will be championed by the press despite being unworkable. If people think their kids shouldn't be out after dark then it's their responsibility to make sure their kids aren't out after dark, not the police and governments.

It's not often I use the name 'Nick Cohen' and 'intelligent well thought out piece' in the same sentence but here's an intelligent well thought out piece from Nick Cohen about how as the Tory Party seem to be marking time until the next election and David Cameron's apotheosis a blind eye is being turned to their faults in much the same way as with New Labour before 1997.

Labels: Conservatives, crime, Government, Labour

It's pretty impressive to have an MP with which I agree totally on one particular subject act like such an enormous arse about it. David Davis, despite being a Tory who thinks we should bring back capital punishment, is normally surprisingly accurate in his criticisms of the Government's bizarre desire to take away our freedoms in order to keep them somewhere safe while assuring us that the restrictions they are replaced with are twice as slimming and comes in a variety of colours.

But why exactly did he feel the need to go off the reservation big time and go for the vanity shot? Resigning as an MP in order to force a by-election in his constituency, then standing for the seat, then claiming it's a referendum on the Government's security laws is ridiculous. His constituency, Haltemprice and Howden, has been a safe Tory seat for at least thirty years, possibly longer. If the seat couldn't be taken in 1997, when there were major fungal infections more popular than Conservative politicians, then what chance would Labour have when they are trailing the Tories in national polls? A by-election is not a referendum, in a referendum I get to express my opinion whereas in this by-election I don't, so claiming that it matters to anything outside of Davis' ego is just foolish.

However, the fact that Labour didn't announce within the first day that they weren't going to submit themselves to a completely unnecessary kicking which puffs up Davis AS WELL AS the predictable abuse they will get from the press makes me wonder whether they have become completely detached from reality. Are they really thinking "Hmmm, maybe we could win in a distorted by-election in a safe Tory seat to the incumbent"?

Labels: civil liberties, Conservatives, Government, Labour

The vast failure and capitulation to terrorists that is the UK ID Card scam rumbles on. The Government continues to be deaf to evidence that this whole enterprise is a waste of time and money and is this the excuse the Tories will use to continue the ID Card scheme after campaigning on it's abolition. It's only right to be sceptical, Boris Johnson started reversing on his few clear campaign pledges barely after finishing being sworn in. Tony Blair might have been a Tory masquerading as a Labour politician but David Cameron isn't even that, more a mirror to whatever strong opinions surround him at each moment.

Labels: Conservatives, David Cameron, ID cards, identity theft, Labour

Labour want to control you, The Tories would like to control women's bodies. A plague on both your houses.

Labels: abortion, Conservatives, ID cards, Labour

Is Team Blonde Buffoon dialling back expectations on the return of the Routemaster?

The Mayor's plans for a new generation Routemaster may not happen, his new transport boss admitted today. Kulveer Ranger, Boris Johnson's director of transport policy, said that a design competition would be launched - but if no bid was good enough they would look again at the pledge.

This will be good news, the last thing we need is the huge unnecessary expense of replacing a fleet of perfectly adequate buses with much less accessible designs in the name of conservative (rather than Conservative) nostalgia. However, seeing as he insisted on making such a big point of this policy during this campaign that we can have some justifiable giggles that New Conservatism has overtaken New Labour for breaking campaign promises once in power.

Though hopefully it's impossible to mistake me for a supporter of the Blair/Brown party I have been feeling lately how I assume Tories felt in those last few months before May the 1st 1997. Baring some massive disaster that gives him the chance to look commanding and reassuring Gordon Brown now looks like a dead Prime Minister walking, certainly all the friends of Blair lining up to put the boot in aren't helping.

I'm of the generation that grew up knowing no different than a Conservative government and the likelihood of that returning strikes more cold dread into my heart than the liberty-cancelling, ID Card supporting Labour party. At the moment David Cameron doesn't quite have that air of Blair in 1996 of just waiting to assume the Premiership that everyone knew would soon be his but it can't be much longer in coming. The tragedy for the country is that Boris becoming mayor proves that no-one who voted for him were concerned with his policies, I've yet to speak to or here from anyone that voted for what he said he would do, they either voted Ken out or because they thought the mayorship could be run by a part-time gameshow host. The lesson Cameron is free to draw for this is that he doesn't need to make pretences of creeping leftwards, he's likely to be voted in if the Conservative party manifesto was 'compulsory euthanasia of all Conservative party members and Daily Mail readers' and the prospect of Oliver Letwin getting gay with Michael Gove televised nightly. It'll also mean that they'll have a manifesto promise to scrap ID Cards then keep them when they get in, much as the Labour Party felt that a Freedom of Information act was a necessity right up until the point they had the power to bring it in.

Some of my friends hope that Prime Minister 'Dave' will inspire a fresh wave of activism, such as those against Clause 28. I'm less hopeful, though I take comfort in the fact it'll better to have my face ground into the dirt by the boot of a Conservative that calls themselves a Conservative rather than a Tory that calls themself Labour.

Labels: Boris 'Buffoon' Johnson, Conservatives, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Labour, London, London Mayor

(I wrote this yesterday but, through some strange twist of fate, it didn't get posted until today. No, I don't understand why either. Personally I blame The Master. Or the Bad Wolf)

I am, as you know, incredibly well-balanced and supernaturally slow-to-anger. But today's Evening Standard is just taking the piss, wining and dining it, then leaving it in a strange part of town where the buses don't run and the taxi-drivers are all rapists (apparently).

The Evening Standard is known to be 'Fair and Balanced', in the same way that Fox News is 'fair and balanced', namely massively right-wing, xenophobic, borderline racist and making a living by making sure it's readers know all four thousand ways they are currently fucked and how they will die tomorrow with the house they live in not even worth the value of a bag of Birds Eye peas. As befits a newspaper it has taken an aggressively partisan side in the London Mayoral elections with an almost daily barrage of front-page headlines about how Ken Livingstone's campaign is being run entirely by members of Al Qaeda (I wish I were exaggerating and, to be honest, I am, but not by as much as you might think) and that Boris Johnson is a brilliant incisive thinker not seen since the death of William Gladstone, which is a surprise to anyone who's actually ever heard him talk as he's always seemed to be a berk that can't even follow an autocue.

It's no real surprise, Livingstone and Associated Newspapers have a long hatred of one another, which led to Livingstone's stupid comparison of a Jewish Standard reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard. Well done Ken. But even so, the Standard surpasses itself today. 'Mayor Talks of Boris Win', 'I'll start work on my book says Livingstone', 'He gives Tory rival advice on what to do first', 'Fears of poor turnout among Labour voters'. I'm not a Labour supporter, though I'll admit that by temperament I'm probably closer to them than I am to the Tories or Cameron's New Tories. But this sort of thing, making it look as though Livingstone has or is ready to throw in the towel is highly prejudicial. The Standard have fluctuated on a daily basis between whole-hearted support of the blonde-haired fop and just thinking he's great, they were the only ones to have an official poll that somehow gave Boris a double digit lead over Livingstone when all other polls had them either neck-and-neck or within a few percentage points.

Andrew Gilligan, who we all remember from the Hutton Report into the death of Doctor David Kelly was described as unreliable and had to leave the BBC has written almost daily essays for the Standard on the evilness of Ken and the wonderfulness of Saint Boris. Presumably he doesn't see it as a conflict of interest that, after leaving Aunty, he got snapped up by Boris Johnson to work for the Standard. Today he sees fit to launch a broadside against Ken on the grounds the mayor cannot be trusted and lacks credibility. Again Gilligan doesn't bother to mention that perhaps he is expertly placed to spot this because he has been judged to be lacking both in the past.

So today I filled in my postal vote. To my annoyance I found myself forced to give my first vote to Ken, not because he's the best candidate but because he's the best out of the two horse race he's in with Boris. The political disengagement in this country seems so complete that most Boris fans don't seem to pay much attention to the numerous hustings that their hero didn't manage to make it to or the fact that when he did turn up they might wish he hadn't. He'll have another opportunity to put his foot in it on Question Time tonight, a show which few people bother to watch. Ken supported Sir Ian Blair over the Mets shooting of an unnarmed, non-violent Brazilian that they couldn't be bothered to check wasn't an Asian suicide-bomber, he supports the intense disruption that bringing the glorified school sports day of the Olympics to this city, despite the fact that the money to pay for it is being taken from the pockets of Londoners like myself. Yet he is still better than Boris Johnson, who has never managed to run anything, who has a habit of thoughtlessly abusing whole sections of the community, who wants to spend millions of pounds replacing one bus fleet with another that will be less able to be used by parts of the community and who otherwise doesn't seem able to talk in any great detail about why he wants to be mayor or what he'll do should he get it. He's kept at arms length by the Cameron cabinet because they know that if the Conservative Party wants to look credible they can't have Boris bumbling around in the background and who they must really be hoping doesn't become the mayor because he'd end up being exhibit A in why people shouldn't vote Tory at the next General Election.

What's worrying is that there seems to be e general feeling of not voting for Labour because of things like the Iraq War. As someone who was anti-war it's galling for me to say that Boris shouldn't ride into the mayorship because of discontent over a war that Livingstone didn't support. It would be the last laugh of Tony Blair if he has a situation where the entire country turns on his party once he leaves and all the institutions he created turn blue.

Labels: Boris 'Buffoon' Johnson, Labour, London, London Mayor, Red Ken Livingstone

Plan for ID cards announced.

...The first people to get ID cards will be non-EEA foreign nationals living in the UK. They will begin carrying cards in November of this year. The roll-out will start with people historically most likely to abuse the system - including people living here on student visas or marriage visas.

Define 'system', define 'abuse', back this up with some proof or otherwise apologise.

Labels: Government, ID cards, Labour

John Major accuses Labour of 'sleaze'.

Sir John said Tony Blair should apologise for what he had said about the Conservatives in the 1990s, and that he had behaved in an "unscrupulous" way.

Hmmm, the 1990s you say? What, you mean when Tories were the sleaze merchants?

Labels: Conservatives, Labour, sleaze, United Kingdom

Obviously I'm no friend of the Labour Party but some of the headlines over Gordon Brown's decision not to call an unnecessary General Election now seem rather harsh. We can ignore News International, who's policy of claiming that every full stop of government policy is dictated by a NotW poll rather than what Murdoch wants to do today went past ridiculous some time ago and is now over the cliff with the legs still moving, Wil. E. Coyote style. Even the Sindy is going for the jugular, with numerous cartoons of Gordo spilling or not drinking from the bottle marked Courage. But all the news organisations seem to be engaged in a pretense that it was the Government, not they, that were driving the story of whether there was going to be a snap election.

I expect that in a day or two, once the election non-story has died down, there will be a return to the 'Is Ming too old to be a political leader?' story, because Cameron has done enough to put down some of the stories about his leadership for a while (until anyone else in the party says anything else about Tory policy and exposes that they are secretely glad not to fight an election when they don't have a clue what to stand on). I don't know who can take the blame for this, but it does seem that in the last few years, there's been at least one main political story rumbling on and on at any one time, Charlie Kennedy and the whisky bottle, Why have the Lib Dems chosen Ming Campbell, Cameron takes over the Tories, the Cameron bounce, When will Tony Blair leave, why did he announce a date so far in advance, counting down Blair's last three months/two months/six weeks/one week/one day/one hour in office, wasn't Tony Blair a great PM? The Brown bounce, the Cameron stumble, the unnecesary election...

Labels: Conservatives, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Labour, politics

David Cameron in big time freakout. We're a few months into the Gordon Brown premiership and not only has the country not ground to a halt but he's also managed to come out of crises looking pretty good. Which probably explains why Cameron has decided that the new Tory policy is to ditch all the Green, Youtube, Blairite stuff and headback to old school Tory values, you know, the things that helped them to those three General Election defeats. So John Redwood is let out of the cupboard under the stairs where they keep the crazy unpopular members of the party and now we have more of that stuff that always feels like it should be prefaced with the words "I'm not a racist but..."

The whistling sound you can hear is from Gordon Brown's advisors as they exhale in relief, realising that David Cameron has handed them the next election, whenever Brown decides to call it. The grinding noise is Tony Blair's teeth when he realises that his old enemy is going to win a general election, based on his own negligable popularity and not dragged down by the memory of Blair, whom he followed into every unpopular policy. At least David can stop riding that bicycle to work now, his 'green' credentials aren't going to whitewash the brown slurry coming from Tory Central Office (do you see what I did there?).

Related: How did David Cameron lose his nerve and his bearings in just one month? Martin Bright looks at the disarray that has engulfed the Conservatives since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister.

Labels: Conservatives, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Labour, politics, Tony Blair

Labels: Alastair Campbell, books, Labour, Tony Blair

At least someone is upset by Tony Blair's departure...

Labels: Gordon Brown, Labour, Tony Blair, YouTube

Clare Short is thinking of rejoining the Labour Party now that Tony Blair has gone. Can anyone give me odds on Short deciding that maybe she won't leave Parliament at the next election after all.

Labels: Labour, The War Against Terror, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

Up is down, left is right, and the world's political leaders are considering giving a warmonger the job of bringing peace to the Middle-East.

Labels: Iraq, Labour, Middle East, Tony Blair

Tory MP Quentin Davies defects to Labour, though as his letter seems to be entirely about how much he dislikes David Cameron and the direction he's taking the Conservative party in I'm not sure if it's good political sense for Gordon Brown to welcome Mr Davies aboard, does New New Labour really want to be associated with Old Toryism?

Labels: Conservatives, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Labour

Cabinet ministers are putting in £80 each. You only have to spend a tenner.

According to morning newspaper reports cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell is organising a whip round for the departing Tony Blair and John Prescott.

It begs the inevitable question:

What would you buy the soon-to-be former prime minister?

Labels: Labour, Tony Blair

Oh fuck off, fuck off, fuck off! What fucked-up focus group was it that has encouraged New Labour to so blatantly play to the racists in the audience? And this latest idiotic idea from Ruth Kelly? Where is the proof that sharing a common language affects integration? Where would be the safeguards to make sure that this doesn't just ghettoise vulnerable people in our country even more? Where is the proof that immigrants were going around saying "Hurrah! This country's ridiculously helpful translation services mean I never have to bother learning the language!"*? Never mind that English speakers have historically tended not to make as much of an effort learning foreign languages as they have learning ours.

*And if you are a lazy immigrant intended to use translation services rather than learn English I'd suggest that you don't come to Barnet, as the council closed the service entirely a few years back to save money.

Labels: immigration, Labour, racism

The BNP say Margaret Hodge is saying things they want to hear. Even at the worst point of Michael Howard's reign I don't remember the Tories getting the unqualified two thumbs up from the fascists.

Labels: BNP, British National Party, Government, immigration, Labour, multiculturalism