Feeling The Need to Blog

Mmmm. Many months since posting; for various reasons, and active elsewhere but times is hard and earning a living stops the flow.

It is of course easier not to comment if the flavour of comments elsewhere essentially covers what one might want to say. This morning though I am persuaded to put finger to keyboard.

The polls are appalling and suggest that with only a slender lead to the Tories (2 percentage points this morning) if the positions were reversed and Liebore had the Tories' recent 39% rating the wonderfully skewed electoral system may deliver a "landslide" to Gorgon McDoom's Liebore. You can work out your own scenarios over at UK Polling.

I have not seen much written so far that to my mind fully explains the Tory poll decline we are currently seeing. So here goes.

I suspect a combination of factors:

1. We politicos put far too much weight on what happens online than Joe Normal; the Tories thus may have felt more comfortable than they should have done. Overwhelmingly the UK's Joe Normals rely far more on the TV news, including the shockingly biased BBC* (comprehensively tamed over Kelly) and the frankly muddled Sky** output. Joe relies less so on the newspapers, and all the print stats prove that, hence why The Sun's support this time has not "won it".

2. Given the BBC, which dominates the TV news agenda, is little more than a Government mouthpiece and in recent weeks has been on overdrive in order to "work on" a Liebore turnaround; the poll shift is not a surprise.

3. A fair bottom line point is that the Tories themselves jumped the gun by starting their campaign in January. That has not helped. The logic was good on the surface, start rolling out content early to wrong-foot Liebore who are bust and do not have the resources to campaign for five months solid.

Unfortunately forgeting that Liebore have no qualms about using their position in power to present and promote and spin their party political position and that actually it costs nothing to attack you back if you shove your face over the parapet. As Dave did. In military terms the Tories knew they outgunned Liebore in campaign funds and just strode out into the open. Result: shot to pieces and cheaply.

4. Another shoot yourself in the foot issue with the Tories is that they have nil room for mistakes. Nil. And yet they get basic things wrong such as sink estate pregnancy rates. Getting things wrong is one thing (fatal anyway) but getting things wrong in respect of the nation's council estates is doubly wrong; what a great way to demonstrate that you are far, far removed from the streets. How many people saw that data and didn't question it? Why not? Did it seem reasonable? Very scary.

5. And it cannot go unmentioned that Tory policies are in a muddle. How on earth did they allow themselves to get embroiled again in a fox-hunting debate? There was no need to firm up the rural vote, thus no need to put their proverbial head out of that particular fox-hole.

Other policies that involved any sort of new "investment" ie funding from tax needed to be tempered with a caveat that they were subject to affordability. Affordability, plus detail regarding spending cuts, needed to be subject to a caveat that "until we get the real accounts we have no idea how bad things are and all bets are off until that day, if it comes". People would understand that.

6. There is a huge problem with what I would call the youth and trendy vote. The kids out there are spectacularly thick and feckless. Not all but, sorry, the many. They have grown up under soppy Liebore and were taught in huge numbers by Liebore trendies. Add in the kidults too.

Don't ask but I have to deal with this on a daily basis. They have a truly fantastic opinion of themselves and are very much on side with the bong eyed mong and his spectacularly daft lieutenants. No coincidence that the awful Balls is where he is. Doling out cash, plaudits and faux-education to the young will get them where you want them. Either that or the Hitler Youth movement was just an accident.

7. The issue of climate change is problematic. This is an area where the sceptics have been swamped (with youth and trendies in the vanguard) and yet where the general population are with the sceptics. It would have been honest and politically convenient to side with the sceptics.

But the Tories read the signs wrong and went down the green path. Actually, and to add complication, the Tories are more natural conservators than the Stalinist Liebore but that argument (against waste and profligacy, for the small state and actual sustainability) is I appreciate a more complex nuance to present. But hell we should have had a go. What we now have, even amongst the Tory Most Faithful, is that the Tories are just Blue Labour.

8. Personalities, trivia and Gordon Brown's bullying. Well what can you say, except that the Tories should have kept above this strata of debate whilst pointing out that a disfunctional government has brought us a disfunctional State. No harping on details, let these things burn themselves out either way, no carping, no jokes, no pointless questions during PMQ.

The Tory handling of the bully-gate issues (which are real, important and speak for themselves in terms of Joe Normal) has led to Liebore being able to present this as McDoom's passion and drive to "get things done" and an upswing in his personal ratings, apparently amongst males predominantly; so presumably the nation's wife-beater and cage fighter demographic sorted. Own goal.

9. There is something difficult for Joe Normal about change. The Tory call to change is spot on and the man on the street knows that too. But. Here's a story:

A solitary man out walking stumbles and falls over the edge of a high cliff. Only by good fortune does he grab with one arm a branch sticking out of the rock face. He swings momentarily in the air and can see he is too far from the cliff edge above to save himself and below him is a sheer drop to the sea crashing onto sharp rocks. In desparation at his position he shouts out "If there is a God, please save me!"

Strangely a voice booms down from above and says "I am here to help; just do as I say".

The man is hugely relieved and shouts back "Of course, please just tell me what to do". The response is immediate "Then let go of the branch; I will save you"

The man swings for a moment and shouts up into the sky "Er...Is there another God?"

People out there are scared of change. The nearer we go towards the cliff edge the more people are scared. In addition Liebore's natural audience in my experience err towards the nation's bedwetters who are more inclined to sit in the damp for a bit rather than make the journey to the toilet. I believe the polls currently reflect that but as time goes on they will go from damp to cold as well.

10. I am clearly ending this list with some hope for the Tory position. And I believe that ultimately they will prevail once the election is over. If that is not the case then it will be only a matter of months, assuming they hold their cool, until that changes.

Canute can only pretend to hold back the waves for so long and the realities of life will roll in later this year. Joe Normal, the man on the street, the woman in the pub understands this.

My final point is that for a number of the above reasons, for example point six ie the influence of yoof (which means I keep quiet myself in public, not least when at risk of being stabbed or humiliated!) what people actually think and how they will actually vote differs from what they are currently saying.

In my day to day life I come across many, many people and they on the whole want McDoom out and Liebore out, they know they have been lied to and they know the country is bust and the evil day of reckoning has been postponed by a huge and wasteful spending spree.

The majority knows it. And the edifice will come down one way or another.

Let's hope it can be clean and the country does not fall too hard into the chaos that Liebore have created. Again.

NOTE: * & **; this piece was written prior to Dave's Spring Conference speech on Sunday afternoon but posted afterwards. In time for me to notice that the BBC bookended Dave's speech with the horrid Liebore apologist Kevin Maguire of The Mirror whilst Sky started the speech with half the screen taken up with their poll showing the Tories down and ended by managing to find (with apologies where due) some "horrid" Tory who appeared to give Dave a maximum "6 out of 10" for not actually announcing a policy to string up immigrants (as far as I could tell). Well there you go.

Tory Referendum Guarantee News (is Not News)

Have I been in a time warp? The blogs eg Guido Fawkes, the papers and the TV are all spouting some "news" this weekend that the supposed "tory cast iron guarantee on a referendum policy" is somehow dead. Er, you what, mate?

I seem to recall that the tory policy for some time now (and certainly clarified well before this year’s conference season) was always that:

a) A referendum on Lisbon would ONLY ever occur if by the time the tories got in (indeed it was always qualified by an “if the tories got in”) Lisbon had not yet been ratified.

b) That they would not reveal their Plan B until after the ratification of Lisbon because they could not present policy on the back of a speculation that ratification would occur when it had not yet.


[In fact have I gone mad; was it ratified whilst I was offline over the weekend?]


c) A hint that Plan B would involve going back to the EUSSR to discuss the UK’s position having been given a clear mandate by the people of the UK to do so (ie by being elected).

None of the above is new or different, indeed I have been repeating it for weeks now on Guido's blog and been much attacked for this by various anonymous types (though with no refuting of the substance of what I was saying).

Well before the weekend’s renewed orgy of “Dave’s let us down” (by sticking to the policy he said he would stick to but oddly we want to somehow ignore this all of a sudden this weekend) this was all fact, written down, discussed on air, in blogs and "known".

Yet out of the blue it's "news"; what's that news you say? It's news that Dave can't hold an effing referendum on whether to ratify Lisbon. Shock. Horror. Er, he's not in power for a start and, don't know if you have noticed but actually McDoom has already signed up to Lisbon and ignoring what may or may not happen in a Czech court later this week ratification will be done, dusted, and game over well before May 2010. Is that understood?

By a combination of out of context quotes, some oddball reporting and the (understandable but it’s not news) seething anger of others such as Dan The Han (and me for goodness sake!) we seem to be in a perverse voodoo world where all of the above is forgotten or strangely misunderstood, the actual promise of the only party who could promise (ZaNuLab) ignored and the saviours purported to be UKIP.

UKIP FFS!

Now I am fairly sure I have NOT entered into a strange parallel universe (unless as per Professor Nutt I am doing my brain cells more harm with the old red vino than by indulging in similarly copious quantities of skunk and ecstacy) and so must conclude that Reds are Under Our Beds.

Surely LieBore’s virtual sole remaining strategy for clinging on to power in 2010 (ignoring postal votes and other direct and more dangerous scams) is to split the tory vote by promoting UKIP?

This is as certain as it is that the BNP are doing the same to ZaNuLab. [Faux horror all round; apologies to those of a mild disposition who do not need to operate directly in the nasty real world of today on the streets in the UK. It's tough out there, guys, I would far rather be in a nice safe job elsewhere; and my doctor currently agrees].

Guido's blog appears to be rife with numerous trolls doing very well in pushing this strategy it appears! (I notice that the usual suspects such as a certain Mastur Bator (sic) who infest Guido's blog apparently felt no need to comment much on this Dave is A Traitor thread as “themselves” today).

I have pleaded on Guido's time and again for a bit more sanity (or at least circumspection) but have come to the conclusion that some posters professing “this is a time to pin your colours to the mast, pick up a rifle and go over the top to be shot as a matter of some certainty but so what” are starting to come close to spouting Alastair Campbell style constructs. The language is getting creepy, and what with Remembrance Day coming up too.

Do we really want to be shot up in No Man’s Land wrapped in the UKIP flag having gained not one inch on the map whilst the lunatics this would most benefit (ZNL) retain power back home for another agonising few years and continue to destroy what we say we value?

Jeez, to end with these war analogies wasn’t it Churchill who invoked "He that fights and runs away may turn and fight another day; but he that is in battle slain will never rise to fight again"? [Dunkirk 1940 or Dieppe 1942; probably both times].

On the subject of Plan B, what on earth is the UKIP Plan B after 2010 if they succeed in splitting the tory vote and letting in LieBore (or a LieBore/LibidoDum hung parliament) for another few years? By the next General Election they will have destroyed any means for either themselves or the tories to get in again and perform any useful function nor for there to be any going back whatsoever for the great EUSSR swindle, er project.

Or am I in a timewarp? Hello, anyone there?

Telegraph Does Not Like It Up Them

I don't usually re-publish on here what I publish elsewhere but I am unhappy this afternoon about something brewing on Guido's Blog so here goes:

See first the great Order-Order and now my (edited) comment regarding the Telegraph owners' taking down of Nadine Dorries' Blog as follows:

Taking down blogs is more serious than the Order-Order comments imply. Right to reply; correction of inaccuracies; removal of certain statements; mmm, maybe ok.

Certainly the right to deal with it in full under existing provisions eg libel laws. But pulling down a whole blog? You may not like Nadine Dorries (tired, stroppy, trougher or not) and her accusations may have been ill advised in the absence of some careful research but are you happy to focus on her shortcomings and accept that her blog be silenced?

I agree with some of the comments (including ND’s) that we are risking something here in our glee at the downfall of the troughing political class; a vacuum is indeed forming and we need to be vigilant as to what turns up to fill it.

This is not a funny moment and one or two on Order-Order maybe need a quick swot up on how the minority National Socialists achieved power in Germany in the 1930’s. A reminder:

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.

Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestierte.

In finding the translation I hope it will make some think more carefully as to what happens next.

Gordon Must Go

I've posted before on the subject of a Number 10 Petition calling for a general election. That (apolitical) petition lost momentum after taking some weeks to get into the low four figures unfortunately but today Guido Fawkes has taken up support for a new, also apolitical, Petition demanding that Gordon Brown resign.

It has gone in the space of a few hours straight into four figures and looks like it will be the Big One, assuming of course that within the Number 10 machine there is not someone sat fiddling the figures. Ok maybe this requires a huge suspension of disbelief but hey ho.

So I recommend to you that you go directly to Please Go and sign up. The target is one million.

As before, please make sure you use your emails to pass this on.

Very Important Part 2

Just a bit more detail; remember that the Project and its Special People cannot fail, that is what drives the party machinery now.

Go to The Grauniad for a good write up.

Some paragraphs worth noting: "A third of the 279 party members have applied for a postal vote rather than turn up for the originally scheduled hustings, an unusually high number. A large postal vote means Gould (The Favoured One) could have won the selection before the hustings took place, although the inquiry launched last night will postpone any result."

And last week's goings on revisited: "Losing a selection before hustings takes place is a situation Susan Press is familiar with. In West Yorkshire earlier this month, Press, a popular local mayor, lost the Labour nomination for Calder Valley to Steph Booth, who is married to Tony Blair's father-in-law. Although Press won the vote at the hustings by 35 to 22, when the postal votes were counted Booth sealed the nomination. Nearly two-thirds of the voters had applied for a postal vote."

And the busted ballot box? Well according to Guido Fawkes that was in the "safe hands" of ZaNuLab HQ when opened and the slips torn up...

Er, not the "nasty tories" this time then?

Very Important And May Get Lost

There is a disturbing trend within the ZaNuLab party machine to get what they want despite the wishes of the great unwashed (the rest of us). We have had the Glenrothes election rumours (For Example) and other stories about ZNL's great and good and their relatives being parachuted into safe seats. Now this story today (even washing up on the Beeb) which plenty will miss because it sounds too much like boring in-party squabbling. I suggest to you however that we keep the spotlight on this; elements of the ZNL machinery are quite ok about (apparently) tampering with ballot boxes and manipulating postal votes. This does not bode well.

Another View

Labour MP Frank Field and a Link to The Grauniad; probably not for the last time.

Anyone For An Election?

This petition has been out there for some time but no one mainstream will link to it for unknown reasons: GoToTheCountry