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After New Labour: Countdown October 30, 2008 in Uncategorized | No comments The Guardian is collecting blogposts on the subject “After New Labour”. My take on it is here. Last time I responded to a similar question of theirs “Is the Future Conservative?” it ended up in the Daily Mail complete with a doctored photo of me (as blogged below). Doubt this one will have the same effect but it is attracting a fair few comments. Still time to add your two-pennyworth. By the way. Take heed: After New Labour, the second debate in the Who owns the progressive future series, organised by Comment is free and Soundings magazine, will be held in London at Kings Place on November 3 at 7pm. Guardian readers can obtain tickets at a special rate of £5.75 by phoning Kings Place box office on 0844 264 0321 and quoting “Guardian reader offer”. For full details visit the Soundings journal Facebook site and continue the discussion. October 28, 2008 in Uncategorized | 1 comment There is a Smiths lyric for every eventuality of life. So truth about enzyte if you’re having a tea/coffee break it’s “There’s too much caffeine in your bloodstream/and a lack of real spice in your life”. If it’s seeing material success adversely affect someone’s character “in the days when you were hopelessly poor I just liked you more”. For this it must be surely “Charles don’t you ever crave/ to appear on the front of the Daily Mail?/ Dressed in your mother’s bridal veil”. Execept it wasn’t the Daily Mail it was the Mail on Sunday and it didn’t refer to HRH it was about me. And if I seem a little bemused well that’s becuase I am. PS It refers to this by the way which I don’t think they read properly. October 23, 2008 in Uncategorized | 1 comment Cute little thing here from the Huffington Post. It’s a slideshow of Obama pictured with various babes in arms. From this he looks like a safe pair of hands. All politicians are supposed to be able to be adept at kissing babies. I had my own when standing for election. My son was born on the campaign trail of the ‘04 Euro election when I was on Labour’s north west list and was a year old for the ‘05 General Election where the voters of Chesham and Amersham had me as their Labour candidate. Both attempts needless to say ended in defeat but I do have pictures of him with Gerald Kaufman, John Prescott and others. As far as the US election goes, the polls seems to be showing different things: some depict a widening lead but one yesterday showed a tightening to just 1%. There is also the unknown factor of latent racism by voters who aren’t ‘fessing up their true intentions in phone polls - a point interestingly covered with a new twist by Don Paskini here. In such circumstances I’d caution against the cockiness that could be inferred from talking out loud about plans for an Obama cabinet. People may remember the 1992 UK election. Until then I’d never heard of the word “hubris” but in the aftermath of the campaign it was the omnipresent term of all the analysis. October 22, 2008 in Uncategorized | No comments My pal Sean Carey has been plugging away for ages for the rights of the dispossessed of the British colony of Chagos, off Mauritius who were elbowed aside by the UK government to set up the Diego Garcia military base some 40 years ago. Here’s his piece of just the other day in the New Statesman who have also bravely taken up this human rights issue. In it Sean asks “Is it justifiable for British citizens to be removed from a British overseas territory without consultation and against their wishes, to be thrown into abject poverty in the name of the defence interests of Britain and the United States?” Another big backer of the campiagn was ex-Labour leadership hopeful Bryan Gould who may be washed up in some respects but has powerfuly made the case for righting this wrong being an opportunity for Gordon Brown to demonstrate his seriousness about tackling inequality. Now comes the news that the House of Lords has dismissed their claim. Sad news indeed and controversial in the extreme. In a dissenting judgement Lord Bingham is reported as declaring “The duty of protection cannot ordinarily be discharged by removing and excluding the citizen from his homeland.” The only option now is an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg but don’t hold your breath. Such a move would take a couple of years to get the process to kick off in all likeliehood. October 20, 2008 in Uncategorized | No comments Ok the Conservatives are still ahead but for Labour to slash a lead of what was 22 points to just 8 is pretty good going - pretty big in swing terms. This means that we’re heading into hung parliament territory. The last couple of weeks have seen Brown’s stock rise as saviour of the European economies and silenced those within the Labour party who were plotting the end for Brown not long ago. As for Cameron, his bi-partisan support for the government has proved to be as unreliable and shallow as the man himself. His subsequent sticking the knife in shows what a clueless opportunist Cam-the-sham is. Onwards and upwards. October 20, 2008 in Uncategorized | 1 comment Last time Ringo Starr was on this blog it was for his decapitation in Liverpool for dissing the city of culture - much better covered by Chris Paul here. He has proved himself to be a grumpy old man once yet again it seems. Footage of the Beatle declaring “peace and love” while flipping out and forbidding any future correspondence with enclosures for signing is here. XFM has found a clip of when the one who pounded the skins for the fab four was happy to answer fan-mail, for Marge Simpson here. Anyway time is running out if you want him to sign anything - the closing date is 20th Oct. October 17, 2008 in Uncategorized | 1 comment Last night while the News Channels continued to dissect the Joe the Plumber phenomenon Channel 4’s “Dispatches” strand featured a documentary called “Bobski the Builder” which you can watch via their i-player-esque catch-up device here. The programme was part-voyeuristc property show part reality tv as two couples had a home extension each done by respectively an English and Polish builder to test the stereotypes of them as “tea-drinking, crack-showing layabouts” vs ”flexible, hardworker, really, really hardworker” (sic). You could have made an interesting programme about the stories behind the Poles who are offering their services in the building trades these days but this wasn’t it. It’s reductivist logic egged on the couples to make sweeping generalisations about both sides. The result was watchable but wholly unsubstantial/unsatisfying. As for Joe the Plumber, or Joe Wurzerlburger as McCain called him, his actual name is Sam Wurlzelbacher, he doesn’t turn over $250,000 dollars a year (so won’t be adversely affected by Obama tax plans), he’s been exposed as defaulting on his current tax-bill and isn’t even is licencsed plumber. He is enjoying his 15 minutes though. According to the New York Times he said on Thursday “I’m kind of like Britney Spears having a headache. Everybody wants to know about it.” Which is weird beacuse McCain, the man trying to expolit this not-so-average Joe for his own ends, once likened Obama to Britney. Just over a fortnight then it’s all over anyway. October 16, 2008 in Uncategorized | 2 comments
Obama was accused of early on in this whole circus plaigarising Bob the Builder early on with the “yes we can” slogan. The theme of allied building trades was continued in yesterday’s Presidential debate with the floundering John McCain raising the character of Joe the Plumber, a supposed US everyman Obama met on the campaign trail who is being courted by rightwing media, to demonstrate to what extent Democrat policies equate with redistributive socialism. Despite the hoo-ha it looks like the US plumbing union has come out for Obama. A pro-Obama t-shirt starring the bloke himself is also doing the rounds. It looks like the instant polls have seen Obama as the victor. This kind of Joe-public caricatured gross generalsation of one-off cases who are meant to represent the average voter can sometimes flop. Neil Kinnock’s use of the story of Jennifer’s Ear didn’t do it in 1992. Let’s hope the same applies to McCain in two week’s time. October 15, 2008 in Uncategorized | 5 comments Given all the financial newzz flying around they’ve not got as much coverage as they ordinaily would have attracted but two developments that most rank and file Labour party members welcome have occured within 24 hours. First came the news of the quiet shelving of the 42 pre-trial detention period after its Lords defeat (although David Davies is claiming the credit) and now the death knell for the 14+ exams (or the key stage 3 SATs as they are technically termed). Of course the government wouldn’t use the word “u-turn” but they do seem to enacted policy reversals on both of these issues. All good in my book. Does this constitute the much hinted at “change” and “renewal” in domestic policy that has been hinted at? October 13, 2008 in Uncategorized | 5 comments I happened to be in the Palace of Westminster last week when Steve Pound and other Labour MPs were guessing what title Peter Mandelson would take up for her peerage. Suggestions bandied around by this focus group included Lord Monkey mayor, Hartlepool, Notting Hill and Millbank. It looks like the title that has been chosen by the newest member of the Lords is Baron Foy. Looks like he is just in time for the 42 days vote, although I can’t see him voting against myself, sadly. |