Sickening hypocrisy

I note today that The Sun has highlighted a dossier of issues where Labour has "got it wrong".

What The Sun fails to say though is that whilst all these policies were being introduced, The Sun was in total support and failed to raise an objection.

Sickening hypocrisy from The Sun.

Nobody likes glory hunters on the make

So the glory hunters are at it again. Mr Murdoch's weight has shift back to the Tories and "The Sun" is backing David Cameron. Is anybody shocked or surprised ?

Like a seven year old wearing a Manchester United top, the Sun follows the winning team. Forget principles, forget standing for something or arguing your point, The Sun is used as a tool merely to curry favour with whoever is going to hold power.

And what will the price be ? With Recent attacks by James Murdoch on the BBC, will the Murdoch "pay off" be a dismemberment of the BBC ? Will it be a free hand given to Sky ? Don't you just know that there will be a price to be paid for this.

But don't worry, Cameron has the backing of a paper which told lies about Hillsborough, which told lies about Elton John, and is prepared to sell its soul to anyone who looks like they can win.

Receiving the support of "The Sun" is like being patted on the back and told "Well done" by a serial liar and muck spreader. You must be very proud Mr Cameron.

Party Theme Songs For Conference

Details of a survey conducted by PRS for Music have been sent to me by email revealing the UK’s vote for party conference songs.

Last year the Gordon Brown walked on stage with Jackie Wilson’s Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher and Higher. However, in the survey of over 1,000 people, Elton John’s Sorry seems to be the hardest word was voted as most popular suggestion for the entrance of the Prime Minister this year.

Labour Party – most voted songs:
Sorry seems to be the hardest word – Elton John
Tragedy – Steps
So Sad – George Harrison
Die Another Day – Madonna

Conservative Party – most voted songs:
Money, Money, Money – ABBA
I could be so good for you – Dennis Waterman
We are the champions – Queen
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades – Timbuk3

Liberal Democrat Party – most voted songs:
When will I be famous – Bros
Moving on up – M People
For once in my life – Stevie Wonder
Working 9 to 5 – Dolly Parton

Ellis Rich, chairman of PRS for Music comments: “Politics and music have a long-standing reputation of going hand in hand. Many famous artists have expressed their political voice through the medium of music, whilst many politicians have used music as a platform to address their audience. The song which each party leader ultimately decides to use could have a significant impact on the outcome of the upcoming elections”.

Any views on which songs might be better ?

Pressure on Baroness Scotland after new revelations

It is being reported that Baroness Scotland never asked to see the passport of the illegal immigrant she employed illegally.

It puts further pressure on her to resign and overshadows this week's Labour conference.

Iain Dale on Bracknell shortlist ?

Rumours and comments on ConHome suggest Iain Dale is one of the six shortlisted Tories to replace Andrew Mackay in Bracknell.

Only a rumour as yet.

Update : In further support of this, Iain says on Twitter that he is canvassing for a local council election this morning. I note on the Bracknell Council website that they have a by-election in October.

Another guilty pleasure is back

We all have a guilty pleasure. For some it is Strictly Come Dancing, for others it is The X Factor or The Jeremy Kyle Show. But foe me, THIS IS MY GUILTY PLEASURE.

"Bring on the wall !"

What do you do when you see a beggar ?

Watching 'The One Show' on BBC tonight it was interesting to see the article about beggars and the evidence that they do not earn a good living from begging on the streets of our towns and cities.

One of the myths put around in the late 80s and early 90s by the tabloids was that beggars earn £200-£300 a day, but that clearly is not the case. However, the programme did make me think about my own attitude to beggars, particularly in the light of the advice from homeless charities on the show who all advised people never to give money to beggars, instead telling people to but them food or as a better option, give the money to homeless charity like shelter.

My own personal attitude to beggars has been to give money to Big Issue sellers (and I don't take the magazine) because I see them as trying to make the situation better by hard work. Aside from that, I think I try to use certain things to justify my own unwillingness to give money to beggars.

In particular, I find the whole issue of beggars with dogs a complete contradiction. If you don't have enough money to feed yourself, why have a dog. If you have enough money to feed a dog, you don't need to beg. Yes, I know it offers companionship, but if you don't have the money to fed yourself, why inflict this starving and suffering on an animal ?

So what am I trying to say ? I guess I'm like most people. I don't give money to beggars and I try to justify it in my mind using my moral compass. What would I do if I were in a desperate situation ? I'd like to think I'd try my hardest through hard work to sort myself out. That said, I am lucky enough to have a family that love and care for me. Without my great upbringing, what would I have been like. I guess it's a case of "there but for the grace of God go I".

Anyone who wants to offer their views would be welcome.

Tories want to make BBC a puppet of the Tories officially

Apparently the Tories want to openly politicise the BBC by positively discriminating in favour of recruiting Tor members as BBC journalists.

Another ploy by the Tories to ruin the BBC and a sign that the Tories care little for unbiased news gathering.

Hat Tip to Irfan Ahmed

How dim is Sir Liam Donaldson ?

The Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson said two weeks ago that

"We are tantalisingly close to beating swine flu".

Anyone with any medical knowledge would know that this was a stupid comment to make. Although flu numbers were at the time falling, it was obvious that this was down to the school holidays. This was made even more obvious by the fact that flu numbers started falling first in Scotland (where they go on holiday first) and then started to rise again in Scotland (when they returned earlier than in England and Wales). So knowing this, why did Sir Liam say what he said ?

Now, with the holidays over, we have seen two rises in successive weeks, and now Sir Liam says he thinks "this might be the start of the second wave". Isn't that plainly obvious to everyone ? So why did Sir Liam close his eyes and hope for the best two weeks ago and make such an inane statement ?

Furthermore though, it does make you wonder why schools were not kept closed for another couple of weeks. Children apparently infect 2.4 other people with any virus they have whereas adults infect 1.6 people. This means that children will infect 50% more people than adults this meaning the return to school will make things much worse.

If they had hung on for a couple of weeks before allowing the reopening of schools we would have seen weekly infection rates fall to around 1000 a week. That means that within three weeks of schools reopening we would have been up to about 7000 infections a week just as the vaccine would come on stream. This means that the vaccine would have had a chance to be effective in halting the very worst of the second wave. Instead, by the time the vaccine comes on stream in around 3 weeks infection levels will be 72,000 per week. By the time the vaccine is effective (10-14 days) that means that infection levels will reach 250,000 a week. Assuming the current death rates persist it means around 50-80 people dying who need not have died.

And still Sir Liam thought we were closed to beating swine flu. What an absolute idiot.

Update : Interestingly, the highest number of hospitalisations for any age group so far infected with swine flu is the under 5s, according to the BBC documentary last week. So guess which group is not going to be in the first round of vaccinations ? Under 5s. Well done Sir Liam.

Is there anything he will not say ?

Charles Clarke was when serving as a government minister that just about everyone despised. He would defend the indefensible, introduced legislation that was at odds with the principles of the labour movement from which he came, and seemed like your typical toadying minister.

As a result of this his majority was slashed last time and he now sits on a relatively small majority over the Liberal Democrats in his Norwich South seat.

Then he lost his job as a minister.

From that point on we are supposed to believe from his regular headline grabbing attempts to attack Gordon Brown, a man who Clarke spoke highly of when he was a minister, that he is Labour MP people can trust to speak the truth. Piffle and balderdash.

Charles Clarke, in my opinion, will do anything to save his parliamentary career. This week he was attending the Lib Dem conference speaking at a fringe event. Perhaps the aim was to try and persuade Lib Dems he isn't so bad and that a journey to Norwich South to help out Simon Wright's Lib Dem challenge there is not worth the time. I would strongly disagree. Anyone who wants to send a message to Labour MPs that they will be judged on how they acted when in power, they will be reminded of the wasted opportunities they had and they will have to take responsibility for the mess the country is in after 12 years of Labour rule, then Mr Clarke should be one of our top targets to unseat.

When it comes to MPs doing one thing in office but saying the opposite when out of power, in my opinion Mr Clarke really does take some beating.

Why you cannot rely on "The Market" to look after us

If you ever needed proof why the market does not self regulate and why rules, laws and governments are needed, take the cases reported today of companies ripping off the public sector (you know the public sector, the one always being slagged off by the private sector as being inefficient) by colluding of tenders for contracts.

Yes, finally evidence has been produced to show that taxpayers are being ripped off be private companies who in some cases pay each other to put in inflated bids !

No doubt some libertarian will be along shortly to tell is that the market self regulates and that this is all a figment of my imagination.

Tory Party fractures in Bedford over Mayoral Open Primary

Iain Dale hosted the Tory "Open Primary" in Bedford a few days ago to select their candidate and did a good job of glossing over what seemed obvious from all the TV coverage. That being that the meeting appeared to have been packed with supporters of one candidate.

People commenting to Iain's blog suggested that voters had been instructed by their Mosque to attend and vote for a particular candidate whilst the sudden interest (over 800 people turning up with undreds left outside) surpassed Tory estimates and previous open primaries, suggesting somethig different was happening in Bedford in order to see such a dramatic increase in the turnout of people voting.

Now this criticism would be easy to dismiss and has been by many Tories merely as Lib Dem bluster or sour grapes. But the rift in the local Tories in Beford, widely gossiped and whispered about, but denied by the Tories and Tory bloggers, appears now to have made the news. The Bedford on Sunday Newspaper reports that one of the defeated candidates who was shortlisted has complained that the meeting had been packed and broke its own rules that had been arranged in advance.

In the Bedford on Sunday article, which had details of a leaked e-mail from Nicky Attenborough (Tory Group leader on Bedford Council) it says

‘It is my opinion that Monday night was quite disgraceful. The members, who had been told to get there by 7.30pm, were left sitting there for two hours and the candidates locked in one nasty classroom for two hours and told nothing.‘When I protested at the shambles that was occurring outside, I was told by our minder, ‘you can always go home’.

‘What followed was quite shameful, for a party that prides itself on its efficiency and democracy.‘It was very obvious that the meeting had been hijacked and quite clearly, from where I was sitting, I could see the Liberal Democrats on the front row, Labour on the back row and a sea of faces who couldn't even understand what the candidates were saying.

‘So how could you say that this was a Conservative selection procedure? It was a joke and the backlash has been very severe. Especially since the members were written and told they would have a private meeting in the end to endorse the candidate.‘Despite several angry protestations from the floor, this was ignored, and people with a green band were told to put their hands up. Quite frankly, it just seemed the icing on a very bad cake.

‘You have treated loyal members of this Party with utter contempt, people who fundraise for you, support you financially, go out in the good years and the bad, in all weathers to deliver and canvass for you, sit in polling stations for you, and up to now, were proud to stand for the Conservative Party.

With BBC East reporting this in some detail on the lcoal news today, with more expected tomorrow, it seems that the cat is out of the bag about how this meeting was not all that it seemed.

Remember, David Cameron goes around telling everyone that this is what other parties should be doing !

Tories and the BBC - Shadow Minister lets the cat out of the bag

I argued some years ago that the strategy of those who oppose the BBC does not hold water.

Those with an axe to grind against the BBC attack it when it has popular programmes for appealing to populism and comprting with commercial broadcasters but when the BBC commits itself to minority interestests it gets attacked for not justifying its license fee due to lack of viewers.

This hollow line of reasoning has been shown in its full colours by the ever excellent Liberal Burblings who points out the total hypocrisy of the Tory spokesman at the Royal television Society's Conference.

As I wrote in my original article

"the best way for the BBC to justify its existence is to ensure that they have high viewing figures, popular shows, relevant content, and hit shows. In order to do this the BBC needs to invest lots of money in facilities, creative people and top presenters. But this is where the problems start. If the BBC pays too much for top stars, they are criticised by the Tories/Daily Mail. But as soon as the BBC fails to have top shows, lacks the stars to get viewers watching you know that the Daily Mail will be the very first to jump in and demand the axing of the licence fee because the BBC no longer has any top stars that anyone wants to watch."

And for anyone who believes that commercial broadcaster can make the sort of programmes the BBC makes, can I refer you to THIS article I wrote a long time ago which deals with original BBC shows and ITV derivitive copies which are useless in comparison.

Tory blogger doing the job that a Lib Dem blogger should be doing.

One of my favourite Tory blogs is Andrew Allison's "A Conservative View". As a resident of Hull North Andrew is heartily sick and tired of his rather useless Labour MP and has in recent weeks regularly highlighted the flaws in her arguments, her contradictions and ways in which public money is used to fund her campaigns.

All of this is well observed and worthy of being pointed out.

My only question, why is a Lib Dem not doing this sort of thing too ? Hull is a major Lib Dem target yet it takes a local Tory to tell us these things.

In the meantime, well done Andrew.

Why Nick Clegg is right about the Tory con trick

Nick Clegg will open the Lib Dem conference with a stinging attack on David Cameron and the Tories for trying to con the electorate in thinking that Tories offer a change that will be break from the politics of the last 30 years. He also will also say the Tories arrogantly believe it is "their turn".

The questions is, was it ever any different ?

In 1997 I remember friends of mine who were not interested in politics get swept along in the religious fervour of New Labour and that things were going to change. Aide from the fact that I was a Lib Dem back then, I felt rather down the day Labour were elected because I knew a massive opportunity to deliver real change had been missed by Tony Blair in an attempt to appear safe to Middle England voters. As a result reforms were small, change was merely window dressing and we kept most of the same old systems and institutions that needed radical reform. Unless you lived in Scotland or Wales, change passed you by.

Now what is different ? What are the Tories planning to do which they think earns them the title to be called progressive ? As I see it the only thing that people expect the Tories to do is make cuts. Now I know the Lib Dems (and Labour belatedly) pledge this too, but I hear nothing else which involves reform other than bland and rather idiotic statements about allowing people with no educational background to run schools. Where is the Tory big idea ?

The answer is that there is no big idea. The Tory plan is to play it safe, follow the Basic Fawlty line of "Don't mention the war" but change it to "Don't mention a policy". I have visions of Tory shadow ministers returning to Cameron's office saying "I mentioned a policy once but I think I got away with it !"

The truth is this country needs more than a rearranging of the deckchairs. We do need policy that will dramatically alter the directing we take if not we risk returning back to where we are now in 10 years time because nobody genuinely believes the Tories will properly regulate the City (after all, their fundraising efforts are co-ordinated by hedge fund managers) whilst genuine policy breakthroughs like those outlined by IDS the other day on welfare do not seem to have been welcomed with open arms.

So whilst the Tories might be better than Labour (come off it, anyone would be better than Labour), what we really want is a something that is more than "a bit better", because this country deserves so much more.

I didn't like her anyway so her views rather justify my opinion

I was always of the opinion that the Queen Mother was a rather spiteful women who did all she could to stop any kind of healing of wounds within the Royal family regarding the former King Edward VIII whilst holding back the modernisation of the whole Royal setup.

On top of this, she lived a good life at our expense indulging her lavish tastes whilst employing people of questionable moral standards.

So I was not in the least surprised today to read in the Queen Mother's offical biography that she disliked talk of money (so she could avoid any fiscal responsibility) and she disliked Liberal Democrats !

Perhaps it is a badge of honour Lib Dems should wear.

Why Iain Duncan Smith is right

I used to love IDS when he was leader of the Tory Party. Slightly hapless, vague, lacking direction, uninspiring & ineffectual were words that summed up (probably unfairly) his stewardship of the Tory Party. However, opinions can change.

In recent years IDS has cleverly created a niche of expertise for himself by becoming the Tories equivalent of Labour's Frank Field in becoming an independent minded expert on Social Security and benefits who is able to say the things that their party leaders are not brave enough to say. And so it is today in the latest proposals from IDS.

I note the Tory Party were quick to disown his ideas and said 2they will be looked at but are not currently Party policy", but I think they were wrong to do so.

The IDS plans involve the benefits system actually helping people back to work (rather then telling people to get a job but cutting of their benefits immediately upon employment leaving people high, dry and broke for several weeks until they are paid) whilst also simplifying the whole confused and complicated system.

In my opinion, the proposals could have gone further as I think that the current benefits system encourages people who have never worked to stay on benefits whilst also incentivising having more and more children in order to avoid work.

So well done IDS. Perhaps not such a bad chap after all.

Garth Crooks brings football punditry in to disrepute

In the immediate aftermath of Emmanuel Adebayor's efforts to rile, wind up and taunt Arsenal fans at Manchester City last weekend you would expect football pundits to show a degree if common sense, but not, it appears, Garth Crooks.

When other pundits on BBC's Final Score show were saying that footballs need to show responsibility for the actions and not exacerbate tensions in the crowd by deliberately running 80 yards to the opposite end of the pitch in order to taunt fans, Garth Crooks stands alone in supporting the rights of the overpaid £150k a week prima donnas to cause crown problems because, in his words "They have a responsibility to celebrate their goal". He even backed up his views by complaining that "It's disgraceful that players are not even allowed to celebrate scoring".

What a pillock.

Celebrating is something you do with friends, colleagues, supporter of your team but not those who oppose you. If he cannot see the difference between celebrating with your fans and taunting opposition fans, then he should not be employed as a pundit.

X Factor losing the X Factor

They always say "Never change a winning formula". So It is odd to see how much the X Factor has changed this year.

Gone are the cosy intimate auditions done in front of a camera crew and the four judges, instead replaced by performing to 2500 people in an arena making the show virtually indistinguishable from Simon Cowell's other hit show Britain's Got Talent.

Also gone are the unaccompanied auditions instead replaced by full backing tracks making it harder to work out if the singers really are that good.

Gone too are the judges disagreeing about contestants. Now every judge seems to vote yes or no in unison.

And with all this somehow, and don't ask me why, the X Factor has gone from the show too. perhaps it is time to switch to Strictly Come Dancing ?

Where is the swine flu vaccine ?

When Swine Flu first reared its head we were assured that a vaccine could be available as early as the first weeks of July. This date passed and we were then told it would be August. As August rolled on we were then told it would be September. Now, it appears, it will be October at the earliest that the vaccine will be here.

I've made this point before, but the government's planning for pandemics was based on H5N1 Bird Flu, which has a kill rate of about 60%. This means that for every 100,000 people getting it, 60,000 die. The government's own plan stated that a vaccine should take just four months to start arriving.

Now we are very lucky that this is a mild swine flu, but still it will be six months before the vaccine arrives.

How can the government have got this so wrong, been so slow and the government get away with it without receiving any flak ? If this had been H5N1 (and it might still be at some future date), we'd have had 200,000 dead by now, with another 500,000 in a second wave. Why are the government being let off the hook for getting this flu wrong just because only a few are dying. People are still dying who could have been saved if this government had pulled their finger out.

Criminal checks for everyone

The latest initiative by the government to ensure that everyone who has anything to do with children, including those parents who give lifts to and from clubs is an astonishing amount of overkill and symbolic of this government's willingness to ignore common sense at all costs.

Whilst we can all appreciate that criminal record checks (CRB checks) are important and necessary for those employed to work with children and those who run childrens' activities, it seems ludicrous to apply this to a further 11 million people.

Clubs and voluntary groups find it hard enough to find volunteers and this move will make that even harder. The government seem to believe that these checks will eliminate all dangers to children but ignore the fact that all offenders have, at some point, been first time offenders. These checks will not stop people with clean records but bad intent having contact with children, so risk will not be eliminated.

The other aspect is the fact that CRB checks are a very good income stream for the government. My old school had to get me CRB checked when I qualified as a teacher. I then got CRB checked again 3 years later when I became a councillor. There was then a change in the status of my school and all staff (including me) had to have further CRB checks. Then I changed school, and my old CRB check (only one year old) was deemed invalid so I was checked again. Two years later my school changed to a Primary school from a Middle school, thus changing it's name, which apparently invalidated the CRB check so all staff were checked again. So by my reckoning in a little over 10 years I have been CRB checked five times, at a cost of £32 each time, costing more than £150. Why a CRB check and a certificate cannot be transferred, take with you from establishment to establishment for a period of five years, only requiring your new employer to phone your previous school or employer to check you have not got any recent convictions, I do not know.

What is the silliest part though was the fact that all 40 plus staff at my school had to be redone just because our school name changed. That's £1300 on checks that were not needed. And now we are being told that school budgets will be squeezed in the recession !

Stuck in Afghanistan

Whilst I never accepted that there was a valid case for the war in Iraq, I have always been firmly of the opinion that Afghanistan, under the Taliban, was a rogue state that promoted and exported terrorism and as a result, our military actions there were worthy of support. I was also deeply aware that many of those in the Taliban were not Afghans and they Taliban were themselves referred to as "Arabs" due to the number of them who were from other countries and enjoying something of a free ride running around with guns on Toyota Landcruisers oppressing local Afghans.

So given my support, it is sickening to think that so many of our troops seem to now have the tag of being out there to support a corrupt leader who fiddled his way through an election which was in many way no more legitimate that the recent Iranian election.

The problem now is that the election fiasco and Hamid Karzai's willingness to legitimise and almost encourage corruption in gives succour not only to those who support terrorists, but also to those too spineless in Europe and the UK to realise that confronting terrorism in Afghanistan keeps it off the streets of the UK.

The only winner of the election in Afghanistan is terrorism, and we appear to be stuck there.

Alan Duncan

Coming to the issue of Alan Duncan late due to my broadband router breaking on Monday (it had lasted five years being on 24/7 which must be some kind of record), I am slightly bemused as to the goings on around Alan Duncan.

Presumably he had done something wrong, so I assumed wrongly he had been sacked. But no. He has still retained a job as a shadow minister. How odd. Is David Cameron saying Alan Duncan was only partly wrong ? Is he saying he wasn't really wrong at all or is it simply a case that friends of Cameron, be they involved in scandals or fiddling expenses or other errors of judgement are allowed to stay close to power whilst the older Tories who resist Cameron's agenda are told to stand down ?

For me there is nothing like the dishonesty of a pseudonym

As the Liberal England blog points out today, there really are questions to be answered by Mr Paul Staines (who likes to refer to himself as Guido Fawkes) about his independence.

The Guido Fawkes blog for some time like to have a veneer of not being tied to one political party or doctrine but has increasingly become more Tory than Iain Dale. Now at least Iain Dale is open about his politics, but isn't it about time we knew the truth about where Guido Fawkes blog now stands politically ?

Why I am not a Tory

The fact that young people now cannot remember the Tories in power must be a blessing for them, but for people my age who remember the Tories and were brought up in the Thatcher years have a long held and almost allergic reaction to the Conservative Party which probably acount for the fact that the Tories, although doing well in the polls, are not at the New Labour levels of 1995-97.

I know people who loathe this government but cannot bring themselves to vote Tory because they remember many of the things in this Youtube video.

My brief views on Libya and Al Megrahi

I have not blogged on the whole prisoner release and Libya before, but there are few things I want to get off my chest.

My view is that Al Megrahi was not guilty of the bombing, planning it or anything else to do with the bombing. The truth is that he was convicted on the basis of evidence from dodgy sources who were incentivised by the US to give evidence that would frame Libya in order to justify the US stance towards that country since the early 1980s.

I don't doubt Libya was guilty of a lot of nasty things in the 1980s. They funded, armed and trained the IRA. But Czechoslovakia too was guilty of this by continuing to produce semtex with no chemical marker (as they promised to do) which would allow it to be detected by sniffer dogs. The Czech's were complicit in working with the Libyans to ensure the IRA was well stocked with grade A Semtex but we say nothing about them. The truth is that whilst Gadaffi was not a nice person, neither was General Franco and the US was happy to deal with him. Likewise the last Shah of Iran was despicable to his people but he too was a friend of the UK and the US.

The truth of the matter is that an innocent man was let go, but sadly the fact that his retrial and appeal never went ahead was the worst thing about this release. It means that those who were really guilty will never be prosecuted or found.

News reports today (exaggerated by the Scum on Sunday) which claim the US is going to withdraw security co-operation with the UK because of Al Megrahi's release are all part of the media spin and the Tory campaign to use this story as another stick to beat Labour with. But they also show a shallow disregard for the fact that real justice will not be done.

Yes, the government have made a dreadful cock up in linking things to trade and denying them whilst the SNP's Justice Minister came over as shallow, dull, slightly dim and unable to say anything other than repeat the same lines over and over again. The SNP have looked just as bad as Labour if not worse.

Anyway, enough of a rant from me. That's my illogically strung together views on this issue. Feel free to tell me I am wrong.

All credit to England Ladies

Much as England's ladies cricket team is a considerably better team than the male equivalent, England Ladies football team appear to be doing the same.

This evening England Ladies beat The Netherlands 2-1 after extra time to get through to the final of the Euro Championships. Just one match now from being the top team in Europe !

It is a shame these games are hidden away Eurosport and are not being shown on any terrestrial broadcast channels. It seems very odd given that Eurosport is in part owned by Eurovision of which the BBC is a shareholder and funding body.

Let us hope that the BBC or one of the many unwatched and unloved ITV Channels might pick the final up.

You don't have to be thick to work in the local media ... but it helps

On BBC East tonight regarding swine flu

"Locally 70,000 people are believed to have Swine Flu"

What ? So nationally last week there were 5,000 new cases but according to the local BBC (the same BBC who thought the Greens would do well in Norwich North and excluded UKIP from the televised debate) there are 70,000 in the East alone. That means that fourteen times as many people have swine flu in East Anglia than there are cases in the whole country at the moment !

Then again, it could be worse. On Radio Norwich, a local radio station which shares the same name as the one Alan Partridge is supposed to work for, showed that Alan Partridge might be a credit to their station when their host this afternoon announced that the answer to the question "Who was the host in 1983 of It'll Be Alright On The Night" was "Graham Norton". And no, there was no irony, no self deprecation, no joke, no apology for getting it wrong. He was deadly serious.

Guess who's back ... Back again ...

If you hadn't noticed (and I'd be surprised if you hadn't), I've been out of the country for the last week and my blogging had been done in advance using scheduled posts (which accounts for their lack of topical issues).

I take the view regarding holidays that you have top have something for people to read as lots of people do like to check in to their regular blogs on a daily basis. But I also don't tell people (except family and neighbours) that I am going away. When I was a councillor I was always surprised that in the weekly councillor briefing it highlighted which councillors were on holiday and the dates they were away. Is there any better way to alert a burglar to your absence other than putting an advert in the paper. Clearly Iain Dale lives in an area with little in the way of crime.

Anyway, back from sunny Menorca and back to work tomorrow.

Three years old

I started this blog three years ago today !

Thanks to all my readers who keep me going.