Entries from April 2007 ↓

I found this Ministry of Truth story hilarious. Councillor Jeremy Kite, the Tory leader of Dartford council sets up a website to capture electors voting intentions. Wouldn’t he have been better just knocking on their door and asking them?

I’ve met some interesting characters whilst door knocking over the weekend, not all of them pleasant.

One veteran and former trades unionist told me that he thought the litter at the end of his garden would have been collected more regularly had Hitler won the war. I tried my best but where do you start?

Another, in front of a group of older people, said that he was voting BNP because he “hated those black b******s”. Seldom have I seen such in-your-face racism.

Still, despite this, it struck me that there has not been a great journey from Labour to the Tories in the last 12 months. In fact, if anything, there is more disenchantment with the Conservatives than last year. I know that my area might not be like other parts of the Union, but Sandwell can’t be the only borough where they are failing to make an impact. Can it?

There is a small tower of musty gardening books in the living room of Watson mansions right now. Amongst the hundreds of pages and thousands of sentences, not one reference will you find to wood pigeons eating lettuce. Yet that is what the scoundrels in my back yard have done over the last five days.

If I wasn’t so keen on ASBOs, I’d buy my son a catapult for his birthday

Well done Alan and Ruth. A great way to tie the knot.

A rising tide has not rasied all the ships. An utterly fascinating piece on family policy by Tony Blair in today’s Telegraph.

Bob has been known to be a little less than generous to the borough of Walsall in his time. But maybe he has been right to maintain his blistering attacks on the previous administration. Bruce George appears to have discovered that the CPS are considering a case involving the possible misappropriations of funds from the regeneration budget.

Don’t take that from me. Take it from the leader of the Conservatives in Sandwell!

Interesting new blog that tracks the workings of Parliament and Congress: Washminster.

The Bloggers for Labour meeting was interesting last night. Lots of ideas were discussed, not least how we could encourage more Labour Party members and trades unionists to enter the blogging world. It was good to put a name to the blogs but also a little disconcerting. Nearly everyone was taking notes – presumably to feed the blog when they got home!

I still didn’t meet Hamer Shawcross though. Or did I?

Stand down Meacher say the McDonnell supporters.

This book by Francis Elliot and James Hanning on David Cameron is fabulously revealing. Cameron, like many MPs was undecided as to the merits of the invasion of Iraq. He had described himself as an instinctive hawk but distinctly “doveish” on the Iraq issue.

Having taken the decision to support the war though, the book then says that Cameron “lavished praise” on Tony Blair. In Cameron’s words:

“Blair himself has been masterful. It pains me to say so, but it’s true. The speech in the great debate was a parliamentary triumph and it would be churlish to deny it. I’ve even sent copies to constituents writing to me about the war.”

That little nugget completely missed me by at the time.

A number of people on both sides of the House tell me that the Elliot/Hanning biography is unduly lenient on Cameron. Yet the book is littered with potentially disasterous pieces of information for Mr C. Like the fact that he drafted Lamont’s statement on the day interest rates hit 15%. To me, this will forever be the single most damaging fact ever to be revealed about David Cameron.

Tory story. Nice idea.