...Some photos I've snapped recently around Newbury. Click to enlarge. First, here's embryonic Newbury's Cinema at long last starting to look like one (a cinema).
A wonderful Chinese dragon from last Sunday's carnival:
St Mary's church, Shaw in glorious sunshine:
Shaw House:
Queen Victoria and her lions, again in glorious sunshine:
I've often wondered about the faces of reaction that met ideas for insurance (it particularly seems to be insurance, for some reason) adverts when first broached at meetings.
Just think...
"Let's have one of those old fashioned phones - not a new one - an old fashioned one, coloured red, with wheels on it, jumping up over a hill towards the camera playing the tune 'Dum de dum, de dum, de dum, de dah' "
or...
"Let's have a Meerkat in a red silk dressing gown pretending to be a web site owner for 'Comparethemeerkat.com' complaining that people keep on coming to his site instead of 'Comparethemarket.com'. We could even set up a real website called 'Comparethemeerkat.com' "
or...
"Everyone is confused about insurance so let's have a website called 'confused.com' "
or...
"I know - let's get one of the most passe´and ugly-as-sin popstars in the history of mankind, who has made a name for himself by being one of the most likely people never to even dream about insurance (let alone take it out), and get him to rant on about insurance while vomit-inducingly stripped to the waist"
Imagine the faces which greeted these ideas at first! Imagine the substances!
Simples. Eeek.
It's good to see David Cameron sweating "relaxed" for a change today. I am utterly amazed that he thinks it's OK to try to deceive the public by saying, very narrowly, that Coulson wasn't in post when Gordon Taylor was paid off. Does Cameron think the public has a collective IQ of 30?
Is Cameron, indeed, saying (bizarrely, in a round about way) that the Editor of the News of the World at the time of the pay-offs should be sacked even though Coulson was in charge when it happened?!
I was very impressed by Chris Huhne's genuine anger shown about this in the Commons today (see him in interview form below).
Great minds think alike - I thought of the comparison of this to the McBride affair. Then I naturally took recourse to the Oracle, Mr Wilcock, and saw that, this morning, he saw the same parallel. A few dodgy emails about a website which never opened were milked to high heaven by David Cameron. Now, the little toe-rag has been revealed as having the most appalling judgment as to who to hire, and thinks he can brazen it out with his posh accent.
As my grandmother used to say: "He's so sharp, one day he'll cut himself".
I hear from sources that the Labour vote in Norwich is proving 75% "soft" and amenable to voting for another party. We just have to persuade them. Please schedule in a trip to Norwich before polling day to help April Pond with some gentle delivery. It's a glorious city. Full details are here.
A bit of a grudge settler. Best watched here but the list is below anyway.
10. "Hi, it's George W. Bush. Why didn't anyone tell me resigning was an option?"
9. "It's John McCain--Why did I call?"
8. "Mark Sanford here. Ever been to Argentina?"
7. "I'm calling from Geico to see if you want to renew your dogsled insurance"
6. "It's Letterman. We still cool?"
5. "McCain again. Still no idea why I called"
4. "Hi, it's the dry cleaner. Having trouble getting caribou blood out of your Prada jacket"
3. "Hi, it's Sarah...Oops...Dialed my own number"
2. "Schwarzenegger here. If you want a job, California could use a new governor"
1. "Hey, it's McCain. Who would've thought you'd retire before I did"
Just when you think we're settling in for a relatively slow news week, up pops Nick Griffin to liven things up. He wants to sink boats carrying illegal immigrants from Africa towards the EU.
But he is in generous mood. Indeed, one could describe the following as the sentiments of a woolly liberal. He wants to throw them a liferaft before we sink them. Bless.
Perhaps it is no surprise that Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons of the BNP will sit in the "non-attached" section of the European Parliament. Not unhinged, mind - just unattached.
It was a great pleasure to see Paul Merton's Silent Clowns show at Newbury's Corn Exchange last night. There was a full house to listen to Merton's enthusiastic introductions to a selection of excellent silent comedy films.
But the real star of the show (apart from Buster Keaton, that is) was Neil Brand who played the piano. It is easy to forget the role of the many improvisational pianists who accompanied millions of silent comedy films in their heyday. Neil Brand showed how it can be done brilliantly, adding to our great enjoyment of the films, particularly the feature showing, Buster Keaton's "Seven Chances".
It was a bit weird to be thoroughly enjoying a film made the year before my dad and, indeed, Her Majesty the Queen were born.
I've just enjoyed this excellent clip of Philip Hammond from Daily Politics. Andrew Neil was a bit bullying with him, and Hammond kept his nerve. But Neil teased out a couple of key points:
1. The Tories have promised 17 new Quangoes but can only currently name 2 which they would get rid of, despite having been in opposition for twelve years and the concept of Quangoes having been around for 30+ years. So, in terms of named bodies, they are currently proposing to actually increase the number of Quangoes by a net total of 15.
2. The Tories quote an average of £658,000 annual salary for the Top 20 Quango executives but couldn't provide the Top 20 list yesterday. Now they have provided the list, it includes the BBC who even Philip Hammond, admittedly under leading questioning from Neil, admits is not a Quango. The list also includes executives of several bodies which are not even within the scope of the Tories own definition of a Quango.
My favourite quote from the interview from Hammond:
I can't promise you about the potato board, because we haven't looked at that in detail.
Most of them work for the BBC (8), Channel 4 (3), the Financial Services Authority and British Nuclear Fuels, none of which have been included in the scope of the recent Tory quango exercise (indeed Philip Hammond, Tory frontbencher, said on air on the Daily Politics show that he didn't think the BBC is a quango).
Andrew Neil explains.
You would have thought a full bells and whistles David Cameron event like this would have been a little better prepared.
With a hat-tip to the tweeting Asquith. What beats me is that this state Senator lives near the geological phenomenon which is the Grand Canyon, for goodness sake!
I've just seen this beautifully written article on the Palin resignation from Maureen Dowd of the New York Times:
Sarah Palin showed on Friday that in one respect at least, she is qualified to be president.
Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.
Usually we don’t find that exquisite battiness in our leaders until they’ve been battered by sordid scandals like Watergate (Nixon), gnawing problems like Vietnam (L.B.J.), or scary threats like biological terrorism (Cheney).
When Lyndon Johnson was president, some of his staff began to think of him as “a sick man,” as Bill Moyers told Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Moyers and his fellow Johnson aide Dick Goodwin even began reading up on mental illness — Bill on manic depression and Dick on paranoia.
And so it was, Todd Purdum learned, as he traveled Alaska reporting on Palin for Vanity Fair, that the governor’s erratic and egoistic behavior has been a source of concern for people there.
“Several told me, independently of one another,” Purdum writes, “that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy’ — and thought it fit her perfectly.”
The White House can drive its inhabitants loopy. So at least Sarah Palin is ahead of the curve on that one.
As Alaskans settled in to enjoy holiday salmon bakes and the post-solstice thaw, their governor had a solipsistic meltdown so strange it made Sparky Sanford look like a model of stability.
On the shore of Lake Lucille, with wild fowl honking and the First Dude smiling, with Piper in the foreground and their Piper Cub in the background, the woman who took the Republican Party by storm only 10 months ago gave an incoherent, breathless and prickly stream of consciousness to a small group in her Wasilla yard. Gobsmacked Alaska politicians, Republican big shots, the national press, her brother, the D.C. lawyer who helped create her political action committee and yes, even Fox News, played catch-up.
What looked like a secret wedding turned out to be a public unraveling as the G.O.P. implosion continued: Sarah wanted everyone to know that she’s not having fun and people are being mean to her and she doesn’t feel like finishing her first term as governor.
She can hunt wolves from the air and field-dress a moose, but she fears being a lame duck? Some brickbats over her ethics and diva turns as John McCain’s running mate, and that dewy skin turns awfully thin.
It was excellent to see David Cameron doing a complete volte face within 10 seconds on Today. Firstly he said that Quangoes should be stringently reviewed, cut down, abolished etc. Then, when challenged to say whether he would freeze public sector pay, he generously sang the praises of independent pay review boards who are....ahem....quangoes.
Mark Valladares has responded sensibly to a post from Charlotte Gore about standing as a parliamentary candidate.
First of all, it is utter and complete cobblers to say that blogging freely, even freely to the extent that Charlotte blogs, precludes winning elections. You only have to look at Boris Johnson. Now he really went to town over years publishing his dodgy, eccentric views to millions of people, not just the thousands (or indeed tens) that read blogs. And the Labour party went through his columns with a fine tooth comb and repeated the dodgy bits ad nauseam in the London mayoral campaign. Johnson still won. So, let's stop this nonsense that says that expressing policy views freely precludes running for office.
Putting that aside for a second, if we assume that Charlotte Gore's blog outpourings preclude her from office then you have to ask yourself: Well, why did she start blogging (with attitude) then? If she didn't realise that what she would write could rebound on her and require subsequent defending, then perhaps she is just not cut out for standing for election in any case. Or if she doesn't want to defend her views on a public election platform - ditto.
There is a remarkable air of strawman self-matyrdom about Charlotte's post. Her letter to electors sounds like a barnstroming election platform to me, rather than the electoral suicide pill she says it is.
Let's face it. If you conclude yourself that your campaigning skills are "terrible" and your ability to "connect with 'normal people' is non-existent" then those reasons, if they are true (which I suspect they are not, by the way) alone are enough not to stand for election. But let's have none of this utter rubbish about blogging precluding one from running. If you want to stand for office and you're any good, you'll have sufficient desire to stand up and explain anything you've written in your blog of the likes (i.e logical liberal policy stances) mentioned by Charlotte. Of course, if you start insulting the electorate, for example, by blogging about meeting electors who all seem to be drunk (a la the Hartlepool by-election), then that is another matter.
So join the rest of us 65 million people in this country, Charlotte, who don't want to stand for political office and drop the disingenuous claptrap about blogging being an obstacle.
Who wants to be an MP anyway? It's a pants job. And being a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate is a fairly thankless task. Just read Paddy Ashdown's account of his desperate early days as a candidate - and he won eventually. Indeed, Charlotte herself recognises the key tasks for a candidate:
Then there’s standing for a party currently in 3rd place in a Tory target seat, in a town that’s pretty much in love with the BNP and has, according to Acorn data, about 500 people that would be classed as typical lib dem voters. Hmm. Then there’s the challenge of getting 20,000 people to vote for you in a year’s time. I did some rough maths and worked out I’d need to be pursuading something like 65 a day. I’d need to raise buckets of money and dazzle and beguile lots of people into delivering leaflets for me. I’d need to keep getting in the local paper, too.
Needing to get into the local paper? What an appalling imposition we put on our candidates! Starting from third place? Paddy never had to do that did he? (Well, he did, actually). Raising money? Persuading people to deliver leaflets? Heavens above! Whatever next! We really do put our candidates through the Twelve Labours of Hercules, don't we? It's a wonder we have any candidates at all.
'Hitler got things done', says an admiring Bernie Eccleston.
Yes...er....well, that's the problem, isn't it? They were the wrong things. If killing twelve million people is getting things done then I think most people - presumably including our Bernie during his moments of clearer thought - would settle for a slough of despond on any day of the week.
The Telegraph expenses machine grinds relentlessly onward.
It is taking me some time to overcome my distress at the news that Jeffrey Donaldson MP is having to repay £555 which he claimed for hotel pay-for-view films. Will he let us know the titles of these films? As taxpayers I think we are entitled to know, given that we have loaned him 555 quid for months. In the absence of such a list, we can only assume that dear Jeffrey watched the film "Room Service 2" multiple times. That it is the only itemisation which appeared on some of thebills. "Room Service 2" eh? Ooh missus!
Dear little Georgie Osbourne, all set to be the most utterly ill-equipped person to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in the history of the post, is being investigated the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.
And, oh dear, Alan Duncan is in the limelight again for some barely comprehensible saga concerning his second home allowance, for which I'd better switch to strictly quoting from the Telegraph:
Alan Duncan, a senior Conservative MP, has claimed tens of thousands of pounds in mortgage interest on his designated second home – even though he had owned the property outright for more than a decade...
All in all, it's hard not to agree with Lord Oakeshott, who has said:
It is now crystal clear David Cameron cracks down on ordinary Tory MPs and smiles sweetly at the in-crowd in the shadow cabinet.
PS The title of this post refers to the last two-thirds. Jeffrey Donaldson is, of course, a Democratic Unionist Party MP, and therefore not in 'Cameron's backyard', or, indeed, his front yard.
Well, it's either bonkers or brilliant, but I suspect the former at the moment. To resign as Governor of Alaska completely undercuts the whole argument forwarded on her behalf for the last year - that she was a competent executive office holder. Her executive experience now looks threadbare and she looks as though she is abandoning the voters of Alaska to try to be President.
It really is one of the most insane, nutty political moves I have witnessed in many years.
"Only dead fish go with the flow" she says, in explanation. Ah but when the seagulls follow the trawler....
Perhaps this will precede a high-falluting shot at the Presidency but she's shot herself in the foot. She will, of course, get huge support from the Republican base. But independents and Democrats are not going to persuaded that she has suddenly become fit for public office by resigning from it.
Even Palin's Republican colleague, Sen Lisa Murkowski has criticised the move:
I am deeply disappointed that the Governor has decided to abandon the State and her constituents before her term has concluded.
As Bruce Reed reminds us, based on past history, quitters don't win.
The Huffpo reports that her allies are saying "She is out of politics, period...she doesn't like her life".
Whatever you say about Sarah Palin, she is never boring. Just imagine what would have happened if she had become Vice-President! A Veep quitting eight months after being elected for no apparent reason other than something to do with fish. It would initiate quite a national crisis.
The Palin resignation speech is worth watching below. It is positively stomach-churning.
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