Cameron - Brown has failed at reducing poverty (but has he?)

I felt obliged to write something about this as it annoyed me so much. It’s a classic opposition move of laying claim to territory traditionally seen as the territory of the other party. Blair made this famous when he declared Labour to be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’.

PMQ’s 23/04/08 - Opportunism Knocks

Prime Minister’s Question Time is probably one of the few times when it can be good to be a Leader of the Opposition. You can stand up, crack a few jokes, have everyone laugh sycophantically with you, insult the Prime Minister (and who gets to do that, to his face, every week?) and pretend to care about issues you have absolutely no history of taking an interest in.

Prime Minister’s Questions 23/4/08 - “Pre-Match Analysis”

My first post for the weekly sessions of Prime Ministers Questions, which Bruce Forsyth recently described as ‘pure vaudeville’. Not sure Gordon Brown would go for that but there you go.

23rd April 2008

 Since the last PMQ’s, pre-Easter recess, Labour and Gordon Brown in particular have got a right old kicking in the press. A few of the more sage journalists have pointed out that this often happens during recess as political hacks run out of things to say. Certainly the hysterical poll that said Gordon Brown is actually more unpopular than when Chamberlain appeased Adolf Hitler was a bit hard to take seriously.

Hysterical Tories part deux - Eric Pickles

There was a story doing the rounds in the more excitable sections of the press t’other day, about how the EU was producing a map that didn’t have the word ‘England’ on it. Needless to say the Daily Mail et al got up in arms about it and I have to admit once I saw the words ‘EU’ in relation to the Daily Mail I didn’t even bother reading it.

Which is a shame, as I missed a doozy of a pickle from Shadow Communities and Local Government spokesman, Eric Pickles.

David Cameron - Violent crime has doubled (and why this is completely untrue)

Oh Dear oh dear, David Cameron is at it again. Scare mongering, accusing the government of telling porkies, before coming out with a whopper of his own.

Today he has claimed that, under Labour, violent crime has doubled and gun crime has ‘nearly doubled’ and drug crime is also up.

Given that he is using the British Crime Survey for sources, it is quite easy to look this one up, and see that he is telling porkies of whopping great big proportions.

You can’t elect Boris Johnson as mayor just because he hasn’t ‘gaffed’.

It seems to me, looking at the press converage on the campaign for London Mayor, a large amount of attention is paid to Johnson and whether or not he has commited any ‘gaffes’ yet. And the fact that he hasn’t on a massive scale - like offending all of Liverpool - seems to be a justifier for him becoming Mayor of London, as if ‘not making gaffes’ was the number one quality needed when running a team of 109,000 people, with an £11billion budget, presiding over a city of ten million people that is one of the most ethnically diverse in the world.

You know you spend too much time thinking about politics when you start dreaming about Gordon Brown.

In the dream it was some big important dinner, and Brown turned up in a horrible green high street style jacket, completely at odds with the dress suits everyone else was wearing (and he had on underneath). Worse still, I could see the label on the outside of the jacket - he’d worn it inside out and he didn’t even realise! I remember in my dream groaning in the horror of it all. He was going to be humiliated.

Who needs enemies when you have backbenchers?

I wouldn’t say I’m ecstatic about the abolition of the 10p tax rate, but I’ve had a good year now to get my head around it. That’s right, a full year. The argument for the 10p tax rate is that is benefits low paid workers. The argument against it is that it doesn’t differentiate between different types of low paid workers, who might be more effectively helped by different means other than tax. It’s a complex argument and the way I have summarised it is literally the depth of my current understanding of it.

What annoys me is how now, all of a sudden, Labour MPs have actually realised what it means, and are up in arms about it.

The Conservative Local Election Launch.

It really annoys me every time David Cameron wheels out his ‘Vote Blue Go Green’ line, which is only around election time funnily enough.

Get your t*ts out for the babs.

That’s what I think Labour’s new slogan should be to encourage proper breast feeding for mothers. Supposedly 75% of women leave the hospital breast feeding but only about 25% (or less possibly) actually carry on doing it until the full six month recommendation and beyond.

I read about this on the live webchat Alan Johnson did yesterday on mumsnet.