Wow. Just wow. You know, I thought I was politically simplistic and intellectually vapid, smashing stories and concepts together for cheap point scoring and even cheaper laughs. But then I read this article by Tory thingymajig* Tim Montgomerie:

Anti-Americanism doesn’t just manifest itself at the dining tables of fashionable London or at routine flag-burning displays in the Middle East. It has serious practical consequences too. Hostile public opinion in Turkey prevented American troops from invading Iraq from the north, seriously complicating the whole war. In Poland and the Czech Republic it has delayed cooperation with Washington on missile defence. Many American businesses and tourists will also testify to the problem.

Ho-ly cow. Go and read the disingenuous, intellectually dishonest whole. You’ll come out the other end feeling like an intellectual titan. You’ll have had your intelligence massively insulted and you’ll resent me for the time you gave up but boy, your ego will be soaring.

* What does he actually do?

George Osborne: what a tosser.

(Via Councillor Bob)

Bada-bing! They tried to mess with Big Peter and look where it got them. They pulled a knife, Mandelson pulled a gun.

What were they thinking? This guy was quietly assassinating minor Labour Party officials before David Cameron and George Osborne’s balls had dropped. Amateurs.

Soon we’ll be shipbuilding:

The Tory leader also hit out at “unsustainable” immigration-fuelled growth and the demise of manufacturing jobs.

“We’ve got to broaden our economic base to include more science, more hi-tech services, more green technologies, more engineering and more high-value manufacturing, drawing upon a much wider range of industries, markets, people, towns and cities.”

Somebody had to say it, I just can’t believe it was the leader of the Conservative Party, a man who still worships at the alter of the Scourge of the Miners.

I tell you that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who don’t need to repent. I just wonder how the miners, dockers and steelworkers who were tossed away by the Tories, like so many champagne corks and protestations of compassion, in favour of merchant bankers, hedge-funders, and other smoke and mirror salesmen are feeling after hearing Dave launch his plan.

(Alex has more. I wouldn’t recommend reading the whole speech. It’s a bit like John Fowles’ The Magus - much less profound than it thinks it is and you’ll hate yourself when you get to the end.)

“It is a very black day for the constitutional position around policing,” said a Whitehall ’source’ about the resignation of Sir Ian Blair.

Shocking, just shocking. Those bloody Tories politicising the police? What a diabolical liberty. You’d never catch New Labour doing that - using the police for their own political ends - would you?

Of course not.

I’m the man with the plan, says Cameronman, oh yes I am. He can’t tell us what the plan is or what it does but he’s definitely got one. Oh, yes. What could it possibly be? Personally, I hope it involves monkeys or jetpacks or monkeys with jetpacks.

However, I can’t help but think of this scene from The Simpsons episode, Homer vs. Patty & Selma. Homer, short of money after a disastrous investment in Halloween pumpkins, is desperate…

Homer: If only I could think of an invention…something that would really make money. Must concentrate and work harder than I’ve ever worked — [falls asleep]

[in his dream, a conference table of executives applaud]

Man: Congratulations, Mr. Simpson. This invention of yours has made us all rich, especially you. It’s simply yet ingenious, and it fits right in the palm of your hand. Every person in America now owns one of these, and in many cases, three or four.

Homer: [reaching for the man's palm] Uh, could I just get a look at that?

Man: Ha ha! Why would you need to see it? You’re the genius that invented the product in question.

Homer: But, uh, could I just –

Man: Now don’t worry, you’ll get to see it just as soon as we unveil our new ad campaign.

[a screen projects a hand closed around something]

[everyone stands up and blocks Homer's view]

Homer: Lemme see, lemme see! Out of the way!

[Marge appears in the dream, then awakens Homer]

Marge: Homer! Homer, wake up! There’s still a few minutes till our usual bedtime.

Homer: Oh, my invention! All our money problems could have been –

This plan had better be good. Let’s hope it’s a little more tangible than Gordon Brown’s ‘vision’ (that is, it actually exists).

You know, I can’t think of a single thing to say about David Cameron’s speech. I suppose it was clever that he declared himself ‘the man with the plan‘ - the papers have gone long on that this morning - without actually saying what that plan is.

Nobody seems overly perturbed by the speech’s vacuity, such are the expectations and attention spans of the modern era. It slipped in one ear and out the other without leaving any impression. I suspect that was what it was designed to do for many.

It’s a 1994-1997 rerun. The Tories don’t need to win the next election when New Labour are going to lose it. The cliche was that New Labour could have put up a dog in a suit as their leader in 1997 and still won. All the New Tories need to do now is stop Cameron taking a whizz on the rug.

The Tories’ Shadow Offence Secretary Liam Fox was showing his compassionate side at the party’s conference this week, by all accounts. His heart was bleeding. For arms dealers.

“I don’t think we support our defence industry enough,” said old Blood ‘n’ Guts of one of the UK’s most heavily subsidised industries. “I was in Iraq last week where they are making big purchases. We made the sacrifices but we are not winning the reconstruction contracts. There is no one from the trade department selling weapons in Iraq.”

Moving on from the fact that, despite appearance to the contrary, the government isn’t strictly the sales division of BAE Systems, is Fox guilty of comparing apples and oranges here? We might be excellent at sending our young men thousands of miles away to die in the desert for a lie but does that make us the best people to pour weapons into the hellish nightmare we subsequently created?

And who knew the ‘liberation’ of Iraq was done on a quid pro quo basis? There’s me thinking we did it to save the people of that country from a bloodthirsty dictator, not provide business opportunities for bloodthirsty arms dealers. Whatever happened to a good deed being its own reward? I bet Liam Foxhole helps old ladies across the street and then holds his hand out for a tip.

From Dave, via Jamie, we get this charming vignette from Tory Fortunate Son, George Osborne:

The development has left the opposition party on the backfoot, as City regulation becomes a new political dividing line. “No one takes pleasure from people making money out of the misery of others but that is a function of capitalist markets,” Mr Osborne said.

I suppose you’ve got to admire his honesty*. From Thatcher through Blair to Brown none of them were actually going to admit it all this verbally and up front - actions speak louder after all. Still, good to be reminded what you’re up against now and again.

No mention of how to remove the misery from the equation you’ll notice from George. These lofty matters stand above conventional morality and the common herd quite clearly. Get used to it peasants - as if we haven’t been used it since Adam (Smith) were a lad.

As Jamie says, you have to imagine that the ‘people making money out of the misery of others’ take some pleasure in it. Or are the Porsches, cocaine, champagne, and thousand quid dinners a device to drown the guilt and the miserable cries of the ‘others’?

*Even though he’s not completely right. Here’s Tory trojan horse, Business Secretary John Hutton, taking immense pleasure from people making money out of the misery of others.

Jamie asks the question:

Lady Thatcher’s symptoms, as described by her daughter, are just as consistent with neurological damage caused by tertiary syphilis as with dementia: personality changes, memory loss, minor strokes and so on. The megalomania and grandiloquence noted by many in the later stages of her rule are also consistent with the later stages of the disease.

There’s every bit as much justification for putting this about as there is in spreading rumours about Brown’s mental state.

Fair’s fair.

How in the name of God’s holy trousers did such a delicate little flower such as Alan Duncan ever become an MP, and how does he survive the daily cut and thrust of parliamentary life? He must be constantly swooning with the vapours…

Barbara Tucker used a loudhailer to accuse Duncan of being a “murderer, terrorist, child murderer, bomber, disgusting, horrible and totally corrupt” as he left parliament one evening in February.

The MP was left “visibly shocked” as Tucker crossed the road to loudly call him a “war criminal” as he waited for a taxi.

I await any future pronouncements on freedom of speech from Mr Duncan with relish. Oh, hang on…

It is nothing to do with freedom of speech or the right to protest.

How’s that then? Or to put it another way: Yes, you bloody oiks, shut your traps and get on with paying Mr Duncan’s expenses. Know your place.

You can’t really blame him, I suppose. Nobody likes being reminded in their complicity in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children, do they? It would make me cross. People are always reminding me of the time I answered the door to a man in wheelchair while my knob was out and it does get a little trying after a while.

Then, without a trace of self-awareness, Duncan said the peace demonstration outside Parliament…

…has become a vulgar and pointless display which is utterly demeaning for the Westminster parliament.

Which means he obviously hasn’t watched Prime Minister’s Questions on the telly or, worse, listened to it on the radio where it sounds like a student rag week lark after too much cider.

Just how does Ms Tucker’s outburst differ from the abuse Duncan and all his chums heap on the Prime Minister each week? You know, the roaring and the braying, the ‘YEEEEAAHHH!’s and the ‘MMMMMEEEEERRRRRRR!’s and the ‘HEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWW!’s whenever Brown tries to get in a word in edgeways.

I think Ms Tucker’s mistake was her reasonably articulate use of the English language. Mr Duncan must have been ‘visibly shocked’ by her level of debate. If only she’s used ‘parliamentary language’. If only she’d made gibbon noises at him.

Someone’s planning another assault on our civil liberties but where is the doughty David Davis For Freedom?

The A-Z of right-wing online commenting.

One of the planks of Boris Johnson’s manifiesto when he ran for London Mayor was that, if successful, he would be ‘giving the taxpayer value for money’.

So it’s completely consistent with that ethos that he’s spending 40 chuffing grand turning all the logos on the Greater London Assembly’s website blue.

I’d suggest that he get out there and get a second quote. When I’m avoiding work I like to rebrand Chicken Yoghurt. It takes a couple of hours if I’m really spinning it out.

I worry that Boris went to the meeting with his web designers and said ‘look here chaps, I know nothing about computers, so I’ll leave it to you, ok?’. The webmonkeys would have left the meeting high-fiving and making kerching! noises. There hasn’t been a quote for a job of work in human history that hasn’t been garnished in the face of a client who’s been far too honest as to their ignorance.

Now, I appreciate that the GLA website is a little larger than mine but the trick with templates and centrally-held graphics is that you make one change and it cascades through the rest of the website. Easy.

Forty grand? Boris, I’ll do it for five.

You’d be forgiven for think so after this news:

A planned inquiry into claims against former London deputy mayor Ray Lewis has been dropped by Boris Johnson.

And after Boris had been so staunch in his defence of Lewis only days ago. Isn’t he interested in clearing his friend’s name? You can imagine the collective screeching from the right-wing press and bloggers if this had been Ken Livingstone.

Demands for inquiries into anything from the Tories will sound a bit two-faced from now one, won’t they? A government in waiting? This kicking stuff into the long grass to avoid embarrassment heralds a Tory party ready to hit the ground running on day one with every cynical, shitty, contemptuous crypto-Blairite trick at its disposal. They’ve cracked it by the looks of it. All hail our new Tory overlords.

We’re told we want choice in everything from health care to schools provision. When do we get a real choice in our politics?

(Via Boris Watch)

Boris Johnson’s administration in London is being billed as a test bench and launch pad for a Tory government. How’s that working out? Take deputy mayor Ray Lewis’ rapidly unravelling cover story…

However, despite these claims, City Hall now admit that they did not place Ray Lewis under any vetting process themselves.

They also admit that the ‘enhanced’ checks, which are routinely carried out on people working with young people, were not undertaken by City Hall before offering Lewis the job.

You know, we’ve had 11 years of political expediency trumping process and competence. You would have hoped that someone in the Tory high command was taking notes and filing them in a big folder marked ‘Dickheadism to be avoided’.

Taking into account the almost odds on certainty of a Tory landslide at the next general election and the utter amateurism/contempt/chicanery* displayed in Lewis’ appointment, it looks like we could all be in trouble.

* Choose your favourite

Back when Boris Johnson was elected London Mayor, those of us expressing our dismay were accused by other left-wing bloggers of chucking our toys out of the pram.

So, I was wondering how it was all going for those non-toy chucking and content left-wingers in the light of what’s happened in the infancy of Johnson’s mayoralty. Any of you going to help me pick up my toys or maybe chuck a few of your own?

‘We need a proper national debate on these important matters… If you were serious about debating these important issues, you should have put up a candidate or at the very least allowed your ministers to debate publicly with me,’ wrote David Davis when challenging the Prime Minister to front up on the matter of civil liberties.

So how’s the Davis debate going? Here’s Shan Oakes, the Green Party’s candidate for Haltemprice and Howden:

I had previously been emailed by the Youth Assembly organiser to ask if I would attend an Assembly meeting to discuss the issues with David Davis. I had replied saying I would be delighted. I have attended several Assembly meetings - which are usually held in Beverley where I live. I had also requested David Davis to include us in meetings to debate the issues to which he had agreed.

We turned up at the school and were kept out. First we were refused entrance to the site, then, after great debate with the Head, we were allowed into a side room with the promise that we could meet the young people after the Tory meeting. Chris Abbott, the head teacher, was very helpful, but had little control over arrangements for the ‘private hire’ of a room in the school premises. We were horrified at the high degree of police presence and the fact that our promised discussion with the young people had been hijacked and turned into a one party PR event for the Tories with no opportunity for legitimate debate.

I tried to tackle the Dave Duo on this when they came out of the building (a friendly journalist had lent me a mike), but they had clearly been made aware of my intention and dived into their car (whilst a policeman held me back) as if they were in some sort of danger. Obviously even they realise they have a lot to hide. So much for civil liberties!

‘If you were serious about debating these important issues… yada yada yada.’ Smile for the camera, David(s).

And to think Davis used to be in the SAS. I’m beginning to think he broke his nose slipping on the soap in the shower. Or falling while running towards a TV camera.

His nickname in the Service was apparently ‘Double Tap‘. Probably something to do with how he opens his Terry’s Chocolate Oranges rather than some balls-out execution technique.

(via Liberal Conspiracy)

But rather than attempt to increase the take-up he has instead decided to scrap the scheme altogether. This means by the mayor’s own figures, that around 75,000 of the poorest Londoners will now have to pay double for their bus and tram fares.

read the rest

Apparently, if I’m reading David Davis correctly, you can derogate from Magna Carta for up to 21 days quite happily. Twenty-eight days is a seemingly tolerable ‘necessary evil’ even though it’s never been used properly. Twenty-nine days and upwards is a resigning issue.

Nope, I’m still none the wiser.

How’s that whole Tory mayor thing working out for you?

This by election is ‘about a fortnight‘.

(Via Unity)

So, then, this David Davis vs Kelvin MacKenzie/Miss Great Britain/John Smeaton/A.N. Other Tangential Diluter thing…

One has abhorrent views on homosexuality, abortion, the death penalty and spoke in favour of, and voted for, 28 days internment. One lives in Rupert Murdoch’s colon and has views too repellent and numerous to relate here. One is famous for punching a burning man. One is Miss Great Britain. One is running on a completely unrelated issue from 42 days internment.

Any way for them all to lose?

Whatever else comes out of David Davis’s by-election, you have to admit he’s managed to achieve that which has eluded men and women for thousands of years: in a mere five days he’s come to symbolise all things for everybody.

Everyone with a cause seems to find an affirmation (not to mention an opportunity) in Davis’s actions. He should get in quick and start a religion. With these powers of persuasion and commanding of attention he could be running the planet by the end of the month.

(In other news, Darth Vader has announced he does not see the need to detain rebel suspects for longer than 28 days. Vanity or mid-life crisis? X-Wingers agonise over whether to support the Lord of the Sith… blah… blah…)