Norwich North – initial thoughts
Results from Norwich North:
Chloe Smith (Conservative) 13,591
Chris Ostrowski (Labour) 6,243
April Pond (Liberal Democrat) 4,803
Glenn Tingle (UK Independence Party) 4,068
Rupert Read (Green) 3,350
Craig Murray (Put an Honest Man into Parliament) 953
Robert West (BNP) 941
Bill Holden (Independent) 166
Howling Laud (Monster Raving Loony) 144
Anne Fryatt (NOTA) 59
Thomas Burridge (Libertarian) 36
Peter Baggs (Independent) 23
Some initial thoughts and questions to kick off discussion:
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CEO contradicts Cameron on links to big business
As part of the Tory re-branding exercise, Bloomberg reported on 1st July:
David Cameron, whose Conservative Party is on course to win power in the U.K. in the next year, said he wanted the government to broaden its base of contractors away from large companies including Capita Group Plc. “At the moment in the civil service there’s a sort of mentality of ‘no one got fired for giving the contract to Capita,’” Cameron told an audience of volunteer workers in London today. “We’ve got to have a culture that’s a little bit more experimental and is prepared to take a bit of a leap sometimes with a small organization.”
Yesterday Bloomberg interviewed the CEO of Capita, who said:
“Conservative party members of a very high level have expressed considerable interest in Capita and outsourcing,” Chief Executive Officer Paul Pindar said in a telephone interview today. “If the Tories win the next election and some of the strong statements they’re making on reducing their cost base are followed through, we could see some good opportunities.”
…
“We thought Cameron’s remarks were flattering, and we’ve talked to other members of the party who thought so too,” said Pindar.
Clearly Mr Pindar failed to get the memo from Cameron to keep shtum and toe the line. Still waiting for Cameron to embrace ‘Red Toryism’ and small businesses.
Pseudoscience is not a valid educational choice
Anyone who’s passionate about science, as I am, cannot help but be seriously concerned by the growing extent to which anti-scientific ideas, and the groups and organisations that promote them, are increasingly creeping into public life and attracting mainstream political support.
While it’s easy to ridicule the purveyors of anti-scientific ideas when they’re to be found at the lunatic fringes of mainstream politics, and one thinks immediately of Nadine Dorries’s ridiculous claim that ‘Tridents aren’t weapons of mass destruction’ and David Tredinnick’s expenses claim for astrology software, the kidding around has to stop when one finds sizeable sums of public money are being routed to organisations that promote pseudoscience as a matter of public policy.
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David Tredinnick MP – giving MPs a worse name
contribution by Josh Plotkin
While second-home flipping and suspect renting arrangements are the stuff of which headlines are made, public scrutiny of expenses has revealed the weird and wonderful reality of some of our MPs. Let’s take…oh, I don’t know, David Tredinnick, Conservative MP for Bosworth.
David Tredinnick has superb form in the field of, well, being an idiot. Over the years he has come out with torrents of rubbish, popping up to add his own ridiculous noise to any debate on homeopathy, alternative medicine or other new-age nonsense.
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Tory councils: rhetoric versus reality
The Tories are decimating local services, even as David Cameron claims he’s a great fan of local power: here’s more on local Tories who see the public spending squeeze as a justification to keep flogging public services off to the voracious private sector.
Another windy night in the Tory borough of Barnet, and your reporter is snuggled in with the crowd at yet another Barnet council cabinet meeting, watching and listening as this council’s rightist zealots pour forth another torrent of pro-privatisation, efficiencies horseshit.
As many good burghers of Barnet already know, Barnet Tories are working up a mad, massive and massively unpopular scheme (tweely dubbed Future Shape) for future public service delivery in lucky North London.
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Hypocrisy and the Conservative family fetish
The Family – what does it mean, this ephemeral concept that makes Tory policymakers so very moist and excited? It doesn’t mean any old bunch of people bound together by blood and love. Ian Duncan Smith’s vision of The Family as propounded in his new policy paper, Every Family Matters, is the relatively recent kitsched-out 1950s incarnation of the nuclear heterosexual brood: you know, one man and one woman bound in holy wedlock, living together with their genetic offspring, him in the office, her in the kitchen.
Well, that rules out my family for a start, and probably yours too. And yet Tory wallahs – not even in power yet but already slavering to sink their teeth into Labour’s social reforms – get all gooey over The Family. All you need to do is have a shyster mention ‘ordinary families’, as distinguished from the rest of us scum, and Tory spinsters start wetting their little knickers.
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For Boris Johnson, £250,000 is “chicken feed”
The Conservative Party has been trying furiously in recent years to dispel the notion that it’s a party dominated by and for rich public-school elites. But we know this to be a facade when their own leaders contradict that party line.
There was David Cameron who couldn’t remember how many houses he owned; Anthony Steen MP, who said people were just jealous of his large pad; Michael Gove MP, who made £1,250 an hour. Now London Mayor Boris Johnson says the money from his second salary of £250,000 is just “chicken feed”. The Libdem MP Norman Baker said tonight:
There is nothing wrong with people writing newspaper columns, but this is an enormous amount of money and for Boris Johnson to dismiss it as ‘chicken feed’ shows just how out of touch he and the Conservative party are from the reality of life for millions of Londoners struggling to make ends meet in the depths of a recession.
Mostly right – except that there is something wrong with the London Mayor taking on several side jobs while his own administration is collapsing around him.
Is Brian Coleman AM finished?
Adam at Tory Troll may have dropped a bombshell. He alleges today that: “The London Fire Authority have awarded a £12 million contract to a company that lavished hospitality on it’s Chairman Brian Coleman.”
Through a FOI request he finds that: “The actions of Brian Coleman during a recent Fire Authority meeting were unlawful according to legal papers provided to this blog.” – Coleman is also leader of Barnet Council.
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The award for most absurd defence of Murdoch…
… goes to ConservativeHome editor Tim Montgomerie, who says:
I do not wish to defend every action of the News International empire, but Rupert Murdoch has been an overwhelming force for good in this country’s life and politics. Sky Sports has revolutionised English football.
…
Compared to the increasingly isolationist Daily Mail – which has consistently appeased foreign dictators since the 1930s – there is also something bracingly internationalist about News International.
That is so cringingly bad I think it deserves its own prize. If Rupert Murdoch does not give Montgomerie a job or at least invests in CH then I shall be sorely disappointed. It is funny though, that when Tories get caught in compromising positions then they scream revenge but when its the opposition doing it when they scream ‘whataboutery’. This takes arse-licking to a whole new level. Hey, who cares about your phone being “blagged”, look at least you get footy on Sky Sports!
Why I won’t vote Conservative in Norwich North
….not that I’d ever contemplate voting Tory anyway.
The lead up to election day
As most people are probably aware by now, I live and work in Norwich. More specifically, I live and work in the constituency of Norwich North, which, thanks to the disgraceful and hypocritical behaviour of Gordon Brown’s so-called Star Chamber, is about to have a by-election following the resignation of one of the best constituency MPs in the country, Dr Ian Gibson.
The election is due to take place in a couple of weeks time, on July 23rd, and naturally, as a local resident and a political activist, I’ve been taking a very keen interest in things.
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The dark arts come back to haunt Coulson
While most are only following this News of the World story back to when Clive Goodman was found, with the help of the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, to have intercepted the messages of Prince William, as well as other flunkies in the royal household, it in fact goes further back to the arrest of Stephen Whittamore, a private detective who was used by almost every national tabloid, as well as a few broadsheets, to gain information not just from cracking into mobile phones but also from national databases which he had more than a knack of blagging into.
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Coulsongate: a huge indictment of our system
It’s amusing to watch Tories try and dismiss this massive bombshell so easily. According to the BBC, a spokeswoman for David Cameron said he was “very relaxed” about the story. “The ramping up of this story is ridiculous – this is about a payment made well after Andy (Coulson) left the News of the World.”
But the focus on what payments were made and when is besides the point. Here’s the crux of the matter: it is alleged that while Andy Coulson was deputy editor and editor at the News of the World thousands of people were being illegally spied on and their data tapped into by a big network of journalists at News International.
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Coulson and Cameron: blogger reaction
Paul Burgin / Mars Hill:
Plus what are the chances of Conservative bloggers covering this this evening! They have sometimes accused Labour bloggers of a “Move along now…” attitude, its amazing how silent they are the moment a story against the Conservatives breaks out!
Sunder Katwala / Next Left:
Keeping Coulson may prove too difficult, But the attempt to do suggests that the only ethic that matters is one of convenience – and that different rules apply to the inner circle.
The Tories and Section 28
You know those people who say ‘Labour and Tories, they are just the same’? They should read CentreRight, the voice of the Tory grassroots, more often. Here’s a topical article called, “I don’t apologize for Section 28″.
It begins “I am entirely comfortable in the presence of homosexuals” and then goes on to explain that “alas, tedious though it is, I shall be forced to defend Section 28 as the liberal Conservative measure that it was”.
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Tory machine making excuses for second jobs
Second jobs, so we are told, help MPs to stay in touch with the real world and the needs of constituents.
David Cameron was quick to claim he is “relaxed” about more details of his shadow Cabinet’s outside earnings being made public this week under new transparency rules: “I do not think that a chamber full of professional politicians with no outside experience is a good thing,” he said.
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George Osborne to be investigated
Sky News is reporting that shadow chancellor George Osborne is to be investigated by the sleaze watchdog over his expenses. A few days ago we asked why, despite his expense claims, Osborne was still part of the shadow cabinet.
(via @AdamBienkov)
It’s better not to support this Labour govt over Tories
Quoting an excellent article by Gary Younge last week, Alex Smith over at LabourList says that disillusioned lefties have little choice but to support Labour or at least get involved in the party to make themselves heard.
Going by the polls, Labour still remains the electoral alternative remain the Tories so it makes sense in one way. But I think there is a strategic reason for not supporting this New Labour administration.
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Legislation that amounts to nothing
One of the more cutting attacks of recent months on the government came not from the Conservatives but from that other continual provider of friendly fire, Frank Field. Writing about government business which was slowly winding its way towards conclusion, he said: “week after week MPs have been turning up but with almost no serious work to do. There is the odd bill to be sure. But there is no legislative programme to speak of … the whole exercise is vacuous.”
This misses the point that it is not the quantity of bills which are passed, and New Labour has in the past been rightly accused of legislative mania, but rather the quality, on which Labour again falls down on. The immediate answer to passing frenzies and quick to evaporate moral panics is always to get something on the statute book, regardless of how those laws will end up being used and the overall effect they will have.
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Why is George Osborne still in shadow cabinet?
David Cameron may have given the impression he intends to reprimand MPs who made seriously large expense claims, but in fact this has not applied to his close coterie of chums in the shadow cabinet. Of these, shadow chancellor George Osborne is perhaps the biggest offender.
And even though Cameron’s has talked tough, as the timeline below shows, he has done nothing about Osborne. And yet our media fails to ask him why Osborne still remains in office.
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Gove MP makes £1,250 an hour on the side
Who says second jobs aren’t lucrative? Tory shadow cabinet minister Michael Gove should certainly fall into that category. According to information revealed by the Conservatives today, this is his rough second-income from a column at the The Times newspaper.
London Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh writes on his blog:
Govey gets £5,000 a month but reveals that “the number of hours worked for that payment” is “1 hour a week or so”. Nice work if you can get it. He was obviously torn between telling The Times that he worked really, really hard for his money and telling the voters that he doesn’t spend all that much time on his journalism. As a result, his hourly rate looks like something a corporate lawyer would drool over.
That’s not to mention the erudite columns for Building Magazine, Scotland on Sunday etc.
This whole second jobs scheme was working out quite nicely for the Tories.
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