Category Archives: british politics

Question the Prime Minister

1

the Downing Street website aka tony”s portal will be broadcasting an “exclusive interview” with the Prime Minister tomorrow - and stop press! you will be able to ask him questions.

“The new forum is open to anyone and is an opportunity for the public to challenge the PM on any subject they wish, just as MPs do every Wednesday at Prime Minister”s Questions Time.”

Apparently the interviewers choose the questions ( not his team) : Sarah Sands of the Daily Mail and Michael White of The Guardian.

You can email your questions to questions@pmo.gov.uk

Apparently the broadcast will start at 5 pm tomorrow, and you”ve got till 12 noon to email them the questions. I remember the last time they had such a webcast, tony was late!
tony

Local elections - May 4th 2006

4

Your Vote

Local elections are held across the UK this thursday 4th may.
Seats in each of 144 District, Borough, Metropolitan Borough and Unitary Councils outside of London, and all seats on the 32 London Borough Councils, are up for election.

For a full list check out the Electoral Commission

Also see About My Vote

I know who I won”t be voting for! There is one Green candidate standing in my ward so I reckon one vote for him. The other two i shall spread between some suitable-looking Lib Dems.

As the Electoral Commission points out, voter turnout for local elections is usually pretty low - on average they estimate 30%.

It will be interesting to watch how the elections will affect a Councils “overall control”. Rumours are rife everywhere of course, and the london se1 community website reports potential “upsets” in Southwark and Lambeth - both councils are in a “no overall control” situation. Southwark has been run by a minority Liberal Democrat administration whilst in Lambeth the Lib Dems and the Conservatives formed a coalition.

“triple whammy wednesday” & the woes of the Labour Party

2

well its been an eventful week (or month even) for the Labour Party. beset by trouble left right and centre. wednesday’s been referred to as the ‘triple whammy wednesday’, with Charles Clarke, Patricia Hewitt and John Prescott all having signally lousy days. To say the least. So there’s the whole ‘oh why didn’t you deport the foreign criminals- as they’re so much worse than british criminals’ scandal surrounding the Home Secretary, Prescott mired in the sleaze surrounding revelations of an affair with his ‘diary secretary’ and Patricia booed off stage during her speech to the nurses, no doubt NHS cuts have something to do with that..

wonderful, all set for the election week then i see. should be exciting - when thursday 4th may rolls around im certainly going to the polls.

past present and future will be away for the next 2 weeks..

2

im off on travels. and when i return hopefully there will be plenty of material from my trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh.

in the meantime, here in London this weekend no doubt there will be plenty of rumination on Ken Livingstone”s latest mishap - press headlines across the world are already screaming headlines about “Red Ken and Nazi jibe” and “Mayor Ken suspended..” etc.

Looks like Ken, like myself, will be getting a well earned (well in my case anyway!) rest from worrying about London”s regeneration.

john reid on “war against evil”

6

Press Coverage -John Reid- Secretary of State for Defence - on the ‘war against evil’ in the Daily Express:

“Britain is waging a ‘war against evil’ - John Reid in an interview with the Daily Express expounded the following views:

“This is a war against evil, make no mistake,” he said. “Evil is the same, whether it’s dressed in Nazi uniforms, the supposed socialists of the Red Brigades and so on, or the IRA in Northern Ireland.” { heh, and the same if it’s a nation-state..}

“The terrorists want to commit mass extermination. And if they can get their hands on the means to do it, they will. These people want to destroy the state of Israel. They want to destroy every Jew they can, and every non-Muslim they can.”

hmm now that sounds a bit funny to me -not the intentions of the terrorist to kill non-muslims -that seems to be very clear - but its not like any ‘non-muslims’ haven’t been ‘destroyed’ as well.. [And what bloody difference does it make who anyone is trying to kill. surely the point is that killing anyone is 'not nice' to say the least. !! ] Oh but maybe that wasn’t their aim - those guys just ‘got’ in the way. Oh right, so that makes it all ‘fine’ then - nothing to get ‘het up’ about. Really! this kind of ‘partisan’ thinking is very irritating - ( and you see it everywhere you go. people appear to be only bothered about their particular little tribe. when will wake up and smell the coffee and realize its this kind of ‘tribalism’ and clicqueyness that causes so much trouble?) where is the human rights discourse? - the right of ALL humans to life - regardless of nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, football club, goth or any other line of division you can think up ( and boy are there lots!) Now that to me would be a sophisticated, democratic, liberal, fair and enlightened approach. Anything else smacks of exactly the kind of faulty and deadly thinking ‘terrrorists’ display.

“These evil terrorists are intent on gaining the technology of mass destruction,” he added.

“And the international nature of this extremist, violent fundamentalism adds up to a bigger terrorist threat than we have ever faced before.”

its funny how the discourse of ‘evil’ is still used even in an allegedly ’scientific’ and non-religious way. What is evil but a ‘religious’ concept - bound up with predetermination and all sorts of other silly ideas. Hah . Anyhow, the point is its funny how this bloke says ‘all evil is the same’ replace evil and say stick in something like ‘all killing is the same- its wrong’ and voila! you have a very good point indeed. maybe mr. reid needs to be a bit more reflexive as he clearly doesn’t seem to see the irony in what he’s saying.

and solidly behind him he was..

1

The Two Smirkers

PM promised to be “solidly behind” US invasion with or without UN backing

Bush and Blair: what a pair of smirking faces..

and it is..Cameron..2:1

1

and David Cameron it is for leader of the Conservatives.

summary:

Davis - 64,398 votes
Cameron - 134,446 votes

More information and analysis on epolitix.com, including the reaction of other political leaders.

David Cameron in front of westminster

Crowning of Cameron?

0

David Cameron is today expected to be named as the next leader of the Conservative Party.

The counting of the ballot papers began at 7.30am ( gosh..i don’t envy that lot) at the London offices of the Electoral Reform Society, and the result will be announced - ta da! - @ 3.00 p.m.. ( tick tock)

is this a done deal? –the tone of the press is that the result is pretty much a foregone conclusion; everyone’s convinced Cameron is going to beat Davis. He’s probably’s already planning what he’s going to wear at his victory party at the Institute of Contemporary Arts tonight..

Davis and Cameron

Follow the drama here.

Archives