Posts Tagged ‘ Iain Dale ’

A society of elite control

Finally, it’s the build-up to election time – the calm before the storm, the Moment of Truth before the Day of Judgment, where not even the best-spun party policy can be hidden from the eagle-eyes of the voting public. And despite hugely conflicting analyses of what turnout will look like in this ‘milestone’ election, I [ READ MORE ]

Top posts for June

By way of something to keep my readership satisfied, here are my half-dozen personal favourite stories out of all the ones I covered in the last month: He’s still here (the political reappearance of Arthur Scargill) How to deal with the BNP (in the wake of the radio interview between Simon Darby and Iain Dale) Electoral reform [ READ MORE ]

How to deal with the BNP

It looks like the British National Party faithful have objected to Iain Dale and Donal Blaney‘s interview with BNP Deputy Leader Simon Darby yesterday – having just finished listening to it, I can’t actually understand what the BNP activists (or sympathisers, or whatever you want to call them) are so annoyed about. Even Mr Darby [ READ MORE ]

Imminent vote of no confidence?

In Iain Dale’s paean to Hazel Blears (who is known in right-wing blogger circles as ‘The Chipmunk’), there was an interesting rumouroid (like a factoid, but more exciting) that there is a letter of no confidence going round Labour MPs, of whom 40 have already signed it – once that number reaches 72, apparently “events [ READ MORE ]

The Speaker resigns

The BBC has the story here, the Times here, the Telegraph here,  Guido here, Iain Dale here, Devil’s Kitchen here, and Wikipedia here. Some of my main news sources, you see… Here’s the text of his speech: Since I came to this House 30 years ago, I have always felt that the House is at [ READ MORE ]

Tory sleaze

I’ve had a fair amount of private criticism from readers of this blog that I have a tendency to focus too much on Labour errors and misdemeanours, and thus implicitly give the Conservatives an easy ride, while completely ignoring the other parties. The latter is merely a function of Westminster being what is called in [ READ MORE ]

MPs expenses

When it isn’t smear emails offering some hard evidence of endemic Westminster sleaze, it’s what the blogs have called “troughing” – elected representatives from all shades of the political spectrum not only making one set of rules for the country and another for themselves, but also lining their pockets with multiple layers of the taxpayers’ [ READ MORE ]

Fleecing the taxpayer

Just back from winning (for the first time) the jackpot at the pub quiz at the Old Black Horse pub down St. Clement’s, Oxford. Depending on whether anything got won last week, myself and my team are either due £30 or £400. Either way, it’s a couple of pints gratis, and a sum that NO-ONE [ READ MORE ]

Brown = Chamberlain

Gordon Brown, March 2010, back from the IMF. For a full explanation, please see Iain Dale[ READ MORE ]

Getting Brown out

The perfect antidote to an afternoon of exams: an official 10 Downing Street online petition calling for Gordon Brown to resign. Guido makes an impassioned plea for a million people to sign up, along with Iain Dale. I just did. Do feel free to follow suit… Meanwhile, Dizzy Thinks has a wonderful little video clip [ READ MORE ]

The Budget to end all Budgets

Just got back from a wonderfully pleasant trip into town only to find that Labour have today decided to give up on any semblance of sensible economic judgment. The BBC has produced one of their usual at-a-glance pieces for the Budget, which I have no qualms in saying reads like an obituary for the UK [ READ MORE ]

They’re all involved!

Can’t honestly say I’m surprised. Charlie Whelan (political director of UNITE), Andrew Dodgson (UNITE press officer), Ray Collins (Labour Party general secretary), Kevin Maguire (unashamedly partisan political journalist), Ed Balls (HM’s schools secretary)… the list just keeps growing. The News of the World, as usual, have the story – and what a tasty one it [ READ MORE ]

Change we need?

The recent turmoil involving Damian McBride, Derek Draper and Guido Fawkes is obviously the big story of the moment, and I was rather expecting matters to quieten down before I came up with a value-judging assessment of the whole affair. As it seems, however, the revelation by Guido, prefaced by this cryptic (and possibly in [ READ MORE ]

Playing at being poor?

In the midst of reading about G20, tax havens and Silvio Berlusconi putting his foot in it again, I came across this article by the wonderful Libby Purves. In it she essentially argues that it’s come to a tipping point as far as people’s economic attitudes are concerned such that the average voter (and importantly, [ READ MORE ]

Twitter

Just the teensiest of mentions that I’ve now also jumped on the Twitter bandwagon at http://twitter.com/mariusostrowski. Funny thing, Twitter – it’s like Facebook status updates but without the entire rigmarole of Facebook attached. Plus you can ‘follow’ people who probably would never touch Facebook with a bargepole – Stephen Fry, Richard Hammond and the like. [ READ MORE ]

Published on Iain Dale

When I sent Iain my German-involvement-in-the-Middle-East article a couple of days ago, I hardly dared hope it would actually appear on the site – but I needn’t have doubted, since a spate of Gmail notifications of Facebook messages from early in the morning (well, my time at least) trumpeted the fact at me with their [ READ MORE ]

Day 34 (30.vii.08)

I’m feeling very pleased with myself today. Nothing new there, you might say, I’m normally a mobile bundle of smugness. But I believe I have good reason this time, though to be fair, I always have a good reason for my high levels of smugness radiation. To be specific, I decided spontaneously early this afternoon [ READ MORE ]

Day 31 (27.vii.08)

Compared to yesterday, today was positively uneventful. I say this with some authority, as when doing the laundry becomes the most interesting part of an afternoon, then you know you’re in trouble. Other than that, I trawled through a lot of blogs at leisure, pointing some accusatory fingers here and there at hypocritical ideologists among [ READ MORE ]

First steps.

  • June 23rd, 2008
  • Posted in General

Right then, well here goes for my first post. Always hard to think of what to say in these moments, bit like meeting complete strangers at a party; and ‘breaking the ice’ isn’t quite so easy when you’re sitting at a computer… So perhaps I should mention a little about why I’ve decided to start [ READ MORE ]

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