Assistance Required

I am looking for a blogging assistant for the six weeks commencing Monday 19 March. This is an opportunity for the right person to have some fun in Prague whilst working on interesting political projects. Some blogging experience preferred, but most important are imaginative, right-wing views and a strong motivation to assist the Conservative cause. You will be located in Prague, though there may be some travel. Other terms and conditions negotiable. If you'd like to discuss further, please leave a message in the comments or mail me at eurservice@googlemail.com.

Winnable Midlands Seats Coming Up For Selection

West Midlands Conservatives blog will be providing details on the selection process for five interesting seats that are coming up. All five deserve excellent candidates who are in it to win. Warwick & Leamington is ultra-marginal and needs to go blue next time.

Coventry North-West is the home seat of scandal-ridden millionaire Geoffrey Robinson. He's nearly 70. Will he stand again? North Warwickshire needs an 8% swing, but it was Tory until 1992 and could swing hard. I've previously blogged on Birmingham Northfield and on Birmingham Selly Oak here and here.

Game Over?

I have rearranged the deckchairs links in my sleazewatch sidebar. Following today's News Of The World exclusive, John McTernan has been promoted to top billing.

Just started a poll based on a clever comment over at Guido's place. Join in. And Grauniad was voted reader's favourite blogging term shading out astro-turfer.

10 Years Of Blair

On May 2nd 2007, Blair will celebrate serving 10 years as prime minister. On May 3rd 2007, his party is going to take one hell of a kicking in the Scottish, Welsh and local elections. No matter what Blair does between now and May, short of being arrested, he's not going to stand down. What the Labour Party's membership thinks is an irrelevance. It serves neither Brown or Blair's personal interests for Blair to go before then. Blair gets his ten years and Brown doesn't carry the can for electoral meltdown. Even if Levy gets arrested, I think that Blair can and will brass it out. He will be forced to announce his exact departure date very soon after the May elections.

The Tory Brand

Beginning Of Cameron

Way back at the start of the Cameron leadership, Tamzin Lightwater suggested in her Spectator column that Thatcherite and Tory were words not to be mentioned at Conservative Central Office. About a year ago, well before my blog had begun, I was having a debate with a fellow Conservative about the word Tory. I said we had to own and alter the Tory brand, he argued to bin it. My main argument was and is that whether we use it or not our opponents will continue to use the word "Tory" disparagingly. Rather than run away from the label, obviously, I prefer to embrace the term.

Tories Are Back

On these themes, there have been some very interesting developments. The chaos of the Blair backdrop has helped, but Margaret Thatcher is unquestionably becoming a legend in her own lifetime. She was rated as the best PM of the 20th Century in a poll of historians last August and now on the Daily Politics poll she is sweeping all other PMs aside with a full 65% of the vote. Tamzin Lightwater's column suggests the right-wing elite have cottoned on and Dave doesn't seem to mind being called a true Tory by friendly newspapers.

We're Not So Old Either

In my book Tory and Conservative are interchangeable terms, but Tory is snappier. As such, I would like to introduce you to the newest blogging Tory. His handle is Brummietory. He might not be old enough to vote yet, but at the age of 17 he has just been appointed the Chairman of Kingstanding Neighbourhood Forum!!! Brummietory lives in Sion Simon's Birmingham Erdington seat (I know - it's too good to be true isn't it?), but he isn't the only young Conservative making a difference in that area. Birmingham's youngest councillor is 23 year old Robert Alden who won the Erdington ward from Labour last May. When you read through local anti-crime initiatives, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Robert's the only local politician trying to make a difference. More reasons why I'm proud to be called a Tory.

Fisking Partisan Jibes

Sloppy, inaccurate posting at Labour Home concerning the news that the Tory Conference will be held at Birmingham in 2008. The comments are just as misinformed/moronic. I hope you agree that the following fisking is fully deserved.

According to reports on Conservative Home, Birmingham's (Tory-administered) Council has bunged the Tory Pary £2million to host their 2007 Conference in the City.

I think you'll find that it is a discount.

Apparently, the justification for giving a political party £2million of taxpayers money is that the amount of business it will generate will greatly exceed this "investment" - the figure £25 million is mentioned. Well, I can't see how it will raise a single penny in income for the Council - so this is a ludicrous assertion.

No. Yours is the ludicrous and badly informed assertion. NEC Ltd which runs the city's conference venues is 50% owned by the council. Therefore, a significant proportion of the income from the conference will benefit the city's coffers directly.

If local businesses who may well benefit from the dosh pouring out of Tory delegates' and other hangers-ons' pockets, want to bribe the Conservatives, I have no problem with that: how private businesses spend their money isn't my concern. But using taxpayers' money - including a large majority of taxpayers who do not support, let alone contribute to the Tory Party, is outrageous. I'm not sure it's even legal.

Marketing Birmingham (in which the council has a minority stake) has been trying to get all three major parties to hold their conferences in Birmingham. This has been supported by all three major parties leaders - Bore for Labour, Whitby for the Tories and Tilsley of the Lib Dems - although it was reported in September that the Labour group in the city opposed trying to get the Labour Party to come! (don't ask me why).

And for the record, it would have been as outrageous if Manchester Council had bunged Labour £2million to net the 2006 Conference.

Do you know what subvention is? Marketing Manchester has a subvention policy for conferences hosted in the city. If cash-strapped Labour didn't manage to get a discount for their event, that's just another example of Labour incompetence.

Oh, and yet again, we see Lib Dems complicit in this maladministration, given that they're the larger party in Birmingham's coalition.

Wrong again!!! There are 41 Conservative councillors and 32 Lib Dems in the ruling coalition in Birmingham. There will be more after the May elections though (haha).

Typical.

This economically illiterate and woefully inaccurate post is a typical partisan jibe.

In other news a former Labour PPC reckons that his comrades should turn up waving placards and throwing eggs. What a bunch of idiots.

Supporting Disabled Sport

COUNT ME IN is a campaign designed to give disability sport a bigger voice in this country. The organisers of the campaign, the English Federation of Disability Sport, need 10,000 names before the end of March 2007. If this amount of names is secured, disability sport is assured a high profile in the media for reaching the target. Please show your support and register by logging onto www.efds.net and clicking on the REGISTER YOUR SUPPORT link. PLEASE REMEMBER TO CHOOSE DSE IN THE REGION SECTION.

Pictured is possibly the greatest disabled swimmer of all-time Natalie Du Toit, who was voted 48th in the prestigious Greatest South African poll.

Thank you for your support.

Is Nick Robinson A Simpleton?

Gongs & Confetti

Allegations that Lord Levy offered Labour donors Peerages and Knighthoods in return for their generosity are not exactly under wraps. It's well documented that Levy has applied the screws to wealthy businessmen (such as his rude approach to Charles Dunstone). Almost every Labour donor has been thrown a gong - Loudmouth David Puttnam got his after £25,000 in Labour donations, Ruth Rendell after £15,000, Melvyn Bragg £32,500, Lord Waheed Alli - free films (I must tell Danny)... I could go on.

Tony Blair

Blair said in December that the peerages awarded were "party peerages" (as few of the donors actually did any party work it would appear he has no defence against the cash for honours charge) and now there's talk of incriminating handwritten notes from Tone. Hardly the actions of innocent parties, 10 Downing Street have utterly failed to co-operate with the police during this investigation. Blair and his head of government relations have been interviewed twice, his chief fundraiser arrested twice, latterly on the more serious charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice - and that's before we start on Ruth Turner.

Banana Republic

As Ross Cowling astutely observes, the UK resembles a banana republic. Where are the men in grey suits?

Nick Robinson - Sleuth Or Simpleton

Meanwhile, the BBC's chief political correspondent, Nick Robinson (pictured - who has yet to accept a comment from me on his blog and is knocking out articles on Peter Lilley (!)) is trying to put the pieces of the jigsaw together. As Donal Blaney would say, GET A GRIP.

Success Breeds Success

I've reneged quickly on my attempt to avoid blogging about blogging, but I did say I would comment on the poll results.



Site Stats

Above is a chart of this site's stats. The number of hits has increased steadily by 50% a month since this blog started. Maintain that rate of growth and I'll be getting more than a million hits a month by the end of 2007! As I've said before, blogging is a means to an end, one of several interests of mine and I have no ambition to be a uber-blogger. Nevertheless, I fully expect to hit new peaks in the coming months and I will be especially active around the time of the May elections.

These stats dovetail quite nicely with the site poll (which I'll keep running for a while) that shows that about half of the visitors to this site only started looking at political blogs in the course of the last year. I think that a large part of the growth in this site's popularity is linked to the increasing popularity of the medium as a whole.

Referrers - Dale style

Each month Iain Dale lists those websites referring over 100 visits. Here's my somewhat shorter list for January

1. Guido 2. Iain Dale 3. Croydonian 4. DizzyThinks 5. Biased BBC 6. Laban Tall

Interestingly all the above are rightwing bloggers, although Labour-supporting Mars Hill was 7th with 91 visits. How's it going with your webstats? Is there a general rise happening?

Enhancing Democracy

Being A Democrat

I am a democrat. Commitment to this concept outweighs my party affiliation or other political beliefs. That doesn't mean that I think that democracy can be imposed overnight - as Iraq shows. Pragmatism is essential. Democracies should evolve so that the elites give more real power to the people over time. It's interesting to note that most of the first modern day Parliamentary democracies evolved in island states. This underlines that in the eyes of the elite, security usually comes before democracy and states under threat won't trust their people to make the right choices between butter and guns. Unfortunately, in the UK today our democracy is deficient in many ways.

Three Steps To Enhancing Democracy & Save Money

As this Parliamentary exchange shows the Electoral Commission costs about £30m a year. It has failed. If it restricts its work to dealing with inquiries from the public and registering political parties we can shave £25m off that. That's the saving money bit.

Step 1 - Put some of that money (not all) into an election lottery. If you vote (can include a spoiled paper), your name goes in the lottery and you can win cash prizes. Just watch the turnout rise. It would be much much more effective than the Electoral Commission.

Step 2 - Run with the our say campaign. I'd set the bar at 2 million signatures to trigger a public referendum - and no holds barred. The our say campaign still seems a little confused on a few issues. They need to speak to my friend Alan Drew who lives in Switzerland to get the finer details worked out.

Step 3 - Reform the EU. Call me a mad optimist (I am), but I believe that the EU is reformable. The EU is undemocratic and unaccountable. We need to pull back powers from them and remove the intrinsic institutional bias to legislate within the EU.

Of course another related issue is standards in public life. David Cameron - you have to take the opportunity right now to set out a clear vision for raising these standards. Banning party peerages would be a start, but it's a lot wider and deeper than the issue of the day. It's about restoring checks and balances to the British Parliamentary system. Would anyone like to contribute some further suggestions?