Europhobia – General Election to be delayed?
(Oi! Steady on with the alarmist headlines, or I’ll report you to Daily Mail Watch!)
Nick Barlow has a fabulous post about Blunkett using this as an argument for ID cards, but Honourable Fiend is far more succinct.
UPDATE – Unrelated, but worth checking out.
God, people like this give me the pip. No link, because the site is totally undeserving of juice:
http://justlandscaping.blogspot.com/
More from this moron here:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/7783092
Busy one this morning. Have a link-dump:
The Guardian Election Blog plugs the genius that is The Blair Watch Project. So far, it’s been used mainly to dump subversive images, but I’ll be much happier once some genuine images come through. And if the determined individuals armed with cameraphones also keep Operation Henman in mind.
Radio 4 have selected their ‘election watch’ weblogs. Despite the lack of any monetary motivation, I submitted my Anne Milton weblog, which made the shortlist, but not the final list. Despite being “one of – if not the – most original (entries) received”, it was shunted to the sidelines because it lacked political balance. Fair enough. One more reason to believe in the BBC.
Murky does an excellent run-down of online campaigns.
FT.com have an election-watch thingie, and have ingeniously stashed the weblog behind a subscription wall. Way to engage, FT.
Nick Barlow – never let the facts… This is a good read. Have a look (and also check out some thoughts from Chicken Yoghurt) before playing with Peter Snow’s swingometer yourself. The Tories don’t stand a chance.
Which is bad news for Stefan Kerner, Parliamentary Candidate for Doncaster Central. In the interests of transparency, I feel I should point out that Stefan (as co-proprietor of DesignerCity Ltd) used to be one of my bosses in the glorious but short-lived dotcom era.
Backing Blair backs him, but this can to attributed to a simple (yet massive) conspiracy.
We now pause to hold hands and sing today’s hymn.
Some further links may follow. Stand by.
UPDATE – Anne Milton has a new pamphlet.
UPDATE – Inspired by the comment by goatchurch, I went to the Labour website and searched for ‘WMD’…
The result?
I say! What a spiffing idea!
Space Hijackers – Mayday Cricket Match against the Government!
I do love the Space Hijackers. They do excellent and inspiring work.
We started – as planned – at The Dome.
No we didn’t. We expected Blair (and the press) to be at Buckingham Palace at 10am, so we made an unannounced start there. The only problem was Blair shifted this time to 11am, by which time we were at The Dome and not expecting to see any journalists given certain priorities. So we missed the press at Buck House and they were all too busy to come and see us at The Dome.
More trucking images coming soon. In the meantime, here are two links to ponder…
Scotsman – And the winners are … the tactical voters: Tactical voting will perhaps be more appealing in this election than any other because, once you cut through the spin, there has seldom been less difference between the two contenders for 10 Downing Street.
Guardian – Hold your nose, vote Blair and Brown will be the victor: Iraq stands as Labour’s gigantic error, fighting George Bush’s war on his terms for his reasons. It is blood that cannot be expunged, expiated or “parked”, as some crasser Labour campaign organisers say. The cabinet and MPs were complicit, but this was Blair’s war and he is immeasurably damaged by it: now it symbolises a host of other discontents. But there is not much Blair can do about it. He can’t apologise for a war he thought right. I am not among those who think he lied. All he can do is keep acknowledging the widespread anger. So at this point the question falls back on the Labour voter. What are you going to do about it? To make Blair suffer by chasing Labour from power would be an odd revenge – cutting off Blair’s nose to spite everyone else’s face. Imagine election night as Labour seat after Labour seat comes tumbling down to the Tories – Portillo night in reverse. (And it would be Tory wins since the Lib Dems can only expect five or six gains from Labour.) The individual voter can’t fine- tune their vote to give Blair a satisfying slap in the face without risking Howard in Downing Street. As ever, revenge is disappointingly elusive.
Lots to do before I even *think* about blogging tomorrow. I hope that this will tide you over:
I also hope that by this time next week you will be equally busy.
Life sucks when you reach the far side of an election and realise that they just wanted it more.
Prepare for action…
UPDATE – Oh, go on… have some more. Post-midday reportage soon. Video may take some time.
UPDATE – Tom, meet Truck. Truck, meet Tom.
Guido has his first (belated) crack at Who’s Who at Labour HQ.
PS – It’s all trucks and meetings for me tomorrow. I hope to return to you bright and breezy on Wednesday morn.
A couple of articles from Sunday’s Observer that may have passed you by…
Observer – US relied on ‘drunken liar’ to justify war: An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq. According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq’s alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as ‘crazy’ by his intelligence handlers and a ‘congenital liar’ by his friends. The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball’s credibility, his claims were included in the administration’s case for war without caveat.
Observer – Labour’s unthinking opposition: David Aaronovitch accuses the intelligentsia of prejudice, cynicism and a lack of political nous in criticising Tony Blair.
You can comment on the latter article via The Observer Blog. Or not.
You may also wish to check out The Guardian’s new Election 2005 Blog aggregator.
UPDATE – And the somehwat suckier version from The Times.
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