Monthly Archives: March 2010

Current Affairs Election 2010 General

Haven’t Labour learned its lesson on selecting candidates?

March 21, 2010 – 6:33 pm

A former news reporter who resigned her job only a few weeks ago has been controversially selected by the Labour party to fight the Ashfield parlimentary  seat at the forthcoming general election.

Gloria De Piero had previously worked for breakfast station GMTV, replacing the outgoing disgraced former defence secretary, Geoff ‘Buff’ Hoon. She was selected over more local and experienced candidates.

This is yet another smack in the face for party activists. Labour have continued to prefer style over substance, and beauty over brains. The people of Ashfield have again been taken for granted. Haven’t they learned the lessons of the problems in their former South Wales heartland where rejected local favourites fought the party machine… and won?

The Conservatives can hardly believe their luck. With Labour in disarray locally, they are now in pole position to winning the seat. The electors of Ashfield will take their revenge… and defeat Ms De Piero at the ballot box.

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Current Affairs Election 2010 General

Give your vote… if you’re so disaffected

March 15, 2010 – 11:34 pm

Via Liberal Conspiracy:

The Give Your Vote Campaign is one of the maddest, most mind-boggling, most potentially revolutionary ideas to come out of the internet age in Britain so far. The concept is simple: if you don’t see the point of using your vote yourself, as is  the case for many Disaffected Yoofs, then you can sign up to receive notification of how one real person in Ghana, Bangladesh or Afghanistan would vote in your place, if they could. And then you get off your arse and you cast that vote….

A simple idea. Unfortunately, critics will dismiss it as a PR gimmick, but that isn’t the point. If a campaign like this  makes cynical people realise the obstacles many in some countries have to go through just to put a cross or a printed finger on a ballot paper, then it may change their minds. Far better to do this than to deface a few posters.

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Current Affairs General

One law for ALL… and that includes politicians

March 12, 2010 – 10:07 pm

According to many commentators, Britain’s politicians still don’t get it. On one hand, they make the laws in Parliament where the rest of us have to obey. On the other they argue that many of these same laws do not apply to them.

Witness the spectacle of seeing four parliamentarians in court in relation to their expenses claims. All of them pleaded not guilty, and bailed to appear back at a later date. If found guilty of such offences they face up to a maximum of seven years in prison each.

The reputation of politicians has fallen to an all-time low, and will continue to fall. If one follows the expenses investigations to their obvious conclusion, then in theory every single person serving in both Houses of Parliament (including Prime Minister Gordon Brown)  should be arrested and charged, but at present that isn’t going to happen. The point is that at last politicians will be subject to the same laws that they impose on the rest of us mere mortals…. and that should be a good thing.

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Current Affairs General

Voting against the wreckers?

March 8, 2010 – 7:13 pm

Just about sums up the mood of the world at the moment…

UPDATE: 62 per cent of electors defy insurgency to vote in Iraq’s recent general election. You can bet that fewer than 50 per cent will even bother turning out to vote in Britain’s  own general election.

Will we defy terminal cynicism in order to change the way the country’s heading? Most people will doubt it.

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Current Affairs General

Ex Labour leader Michael Foot dies

March 3, 2010 – 6:12 pm

A sad day for British politics. Read here.

Micheal Foot was a political titan, who became Labour’s last-ever socialist leader in 1980. Throughout his leadership, he had to suffer both derision from both political foes and allies alike, and the mass defection of many MPs to the short-lived Social Democratic Party in 1981. Despite seeing the party suffer a  heavy defeat in the general election of 1983, his political star survived intact. Unlike many of Labour’s successors, including the careerists in the current cabinet, he actually stood for what he believed in.

With British politics in a near-terminal state of crisis, we desperately need decent and principled leaders more than ever.

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