Tuesday, 21 August 2007

The Poliblogs 21st August


Daniel Finkelstein: Convince voters that the changes of the last eighteen months
are real and will continue

Keep calm. For two reasons. First, because all new Prime Ministers have a honeymoon, there's nothing you can do about it and it won't last forever. Second, because the electorate like you but worry about the party. They therefore need to believe that you are strong. Given your character serenity and optimism is the best way to convey this.

Conservative Home

My Two Cents...on the Heathrow protests

With fawning excitement, the BBC has paid excessive attention to the sordid collection of hippies, pot smokers and anarchists who are protesting at Heathrow Airport against freedom of movement of our citizenry. They oppose the third runway at Heathrow, and passengers flying overseas, because of the supposed damage likely to be caused to the environment by so-called greenhouse gases.

Enough is Enough

The tent commandments

The Camp for Climate Action has certainly caught our attention, but has it made you think twice about flying abroad? What will you do instead?

Comment is Free

When Green goes Goofy

I believe people should be environmentally conscious. I believe people should make every rational effort to protect and preserve our planet's environment, conserve non-renewable resources, discover and use energy sources and raw materials that minimise pollution, and which are renewable or recyclable. That's just common sense.

But what I'm finding increasingly annoying are "Green" busy-bodies whose remonstrations are so irrational that they risk turning the average person off being 'green' at all. A case in point.

Harry’s Place


David Cameron - Comes Out Fighting At Last.

Having returned from his holiday, David Cameron has at last started a decent attack on Labour policy and we should now see an end to the unfathomable Brown bounce. David said: "They want to see their district general hospital improved and people simply do not understand why maternity units and accident and emergency units are being shut down - when actually accident and emergency admissions are actually up and births are up."

Daily Referendum

‘Tory Fight back’ – No, really…

So David Cameron is promising a ‘bare knuckle fight' against Gordon Brown. AND tax cuts. AND he'll save the NHS. Oh, and he’s going to stop knife crime.

Now, ambition is always to be welcomed and all these issues are important to most voters but what is so clearly lacking from the Conservatives is any kind of clear vision. They simply don’t look like they know what they are doing.

Wit & Wisdom

Can he ignore the popular press?

It was The Sun which, as always, distilled the message down to its bare essentials – that "thousands of Labour voters will desert Gordon Brown at the next general election if he refuses to hold a referendum on the EU constitution". Thus we learn that almost a quarter of the party's life-long supporters - 24 percent - say "they will kick the PM in the ballot box unless they get a vote".

EU Referendum

What’ll be the political consequences of a Basra pull-out?

So how is this going to affect domestic politics? Will Gordon get the kudos for finally closing down Britain’s Iraq involvement that was started by his predecessor? Or will this open up again the debate on how the UK got into this position in the first place?

Could a grand pull-out gesture by Brown be part of an early general election campaign. If so how can it be made palatable when there are so many, like the cleric quoted above, who would try to present it as a defeat?

Political Betting

What's not to like about politics?

I know I shouldn’t and it’s very displeasing when others to do it, but, I’d like a moan. Here is a short list of the really vexing things about having an interest in current affairs. Hopefully, some will hit home and there’ll be the discovery that I’m not alone. There may even be widespread agreement, a critical mass of like minded people leading to a resolution that something is done about some of them – the assertion that democracy works!!! Or perhaps, an interesting thread on LabourHome…

Labour Home

New attack on Johnson paints him as Tebbit in a clown's costume

The left-wing Compass group today gives a taste of the attack that Boris Johnson can expect should he become the Tory nominee for Mayor of London. Compass attempt to paint Mr Johnson as Norman Tebbit in a clown's costume. The Guardian highlights the attempt to substantiate Mr Johnson as holding sexist and out-of-date views and likely, therefore, to damage the 'progressive consensus' of London:

Conservative Home

Will "Boris is a racist" really fly?

It looks like those advising and supporting Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, are determined to blackguard his prospective Tory opponent Boris Johnson by any means necessary.

First we had Doreen Lawrence (who has been cultivated by race-activists over the last decade to the point of co-option) wheeled out in The Guardian, to wave her son's shroud and say:

Samizdata

Time to prune back the quangos

Trevor Kavanagh’s column in The Sun today contains one of those facts that makes you stop and re-read the sentence to make sure you’ve understood it correctly. Kavanagh calculates that,

Coffee House Blog

The Non-Courses Report 2007

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has compiled Britain’s first ever list of university “non-courses” – university degrees that lend the respectability of scholarly qualifications to non-academic subjects – and calculated their annual cost to students and taxpayers.

The Tax Payers’ Alliance

Who was the person who faked the Norman Lamb Facebook profile? (Updated)

Assemble the following pieces of evidence about the faking of a Norman Lamb group and profile on Facebook and draw your conclusions:

a. The fake Facebook profile gave as Norman’s email address norman_lamb@hotmail.co.uk

This isn’t a genuine email address for Norman or any of this staff.

b. Emails have been sent from that email address to various people.

Lib Dem Voice

More Tory sock-puppetry and smears

Mark Pack (LibDemVoice) - Who was the person who faked the Norman Lamb Facebook profile?

Some lovely detective work by Mark. I have a couple of details and observations to add:

82.118.116.193 is the IP address connected so strongly to the Facebook impersonation. This is a *static* IP address used for DSL customers of KeConnect. It could be that more than one person is working on this, but only one user account is involved.

Bloggerheads

Hello 82.118.116.193

Domain Name keme.net ? (Network)

IP Address 82.118.116.193 ? (KeConnect ADSL Subscribers)

ISP KeConnect Systems Limited

Location Continent : Europe

Country : United Kingdom (Facts)

State/Region : Suffolk

City : Ipswich

Lat/Long : 52.0833, 1.1667 (Map)

Distance : 62 miles

Duncan Barrowman

1 comment:

CityUnslicker said...

Good round up. IS refereshing to see some good stuff given it is the holiday season!