Mr Fawkes: Spintistics and Bushwhackanomics

Right wing blogger Paul Staines aka Guido Fawkes aka Mr GuF had a go at Newsnight this morning for wonky economic statistics. But only yesterday GuF was reporting a repossessions surge in the UK. Thing is the rate of these in the UK has doubled since early 2005. But in the USA they have gone up by a humungous factor to 2 million, ours are at 27,000.

Our rate is proportionately one fourteenth of that under Bushwhackanomics. Tragic though repossession is for investors or residents the UK has gone from "not that many" to "a few more"? But GuF likes Bushian economics?

My oh my! Mr GuF has reminded us about Tory repossessions. And he's confirmed that, like Dubya, Tories in general and right wing GuFsters in particular stand for cutting tax on the rich and crucifying the poor.

Perhaps next time he'll compare with the peak repossessions rate of Tory times, which I can tell him was 333% of recent figures. Perhaps he can total the last ten years of Tories and compare that with the first ten of Labour? Perhaps he can consider how these days many of the repossessions are from unfortunate rentiers who get in too deep?

Absolutely Fabulous: Tories Nick One From Respect

Ted Jeory at the East London Advertiser has a corker. Particularly as this one is a revolutionary socialist of the SWP.

Amazing! I was speculating ten months ago - towards the end of this - about how Respect would manage if they had the opportunity to form an opposition in Tower Hamlets with the Tories ... :

"Respect in Tower Hamlets also need to realise that grown up electoral politics is not quite like a Students Union. When you roll up with a minority motion the main party will generally speaking spike it and deal with their own business. Which may not mean they disagree with that motion. In a year or two Respect could perhaps form a Coalition with the Tories and be in the box seat themselves. I look forward to the revolutionary explanation for that if it happens."

BREAKING: Ken Agrees to Jasper Gardening Leave

Ken Livingstone has suspended his Senior Race Advisor Lee Jasper at the embattled battler's own request. So that he can clear his name. Silly Man Gilligan will be dancing in the streets. One less watermelon smile on the block, eh Boris?

Meanwhile the eminent psychiatrist Iain Dale throws around mental diagnoses like confetti. Seems he's backing the sleazy serial adulterer, foot in mouth specialist, fibber, and aider and abetter of the criminalist toff Guppy for the Mayor's job.

This is because allegedly Boris unites people. Presumably in uncontrollable laughter at the decision of Dave and George to stick up a buffoon to run the second greatest city in the world.

UPDATE: Sunday 10:55 am, Have corrected the Dale link, sorry. There is a new spoof site also here.

Bozo Johnson MP: Caught Fibbing on the Underground

Cheeky chappy Boris Johnson has done well to escape with a clip round the ear from the conductor for serious mendacity on youth crime on London Transport.

Boris suggests that naughty youth should have their free travel taken away from them temporarily or permanently according to the seriousness of their misdemeanours. That is EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS under his rival Ken Livingstone. It is therefore a marvel that Channel 4's Factcheck gives his claims to the contrary just 60% (3.0 of a possible 5.0) for mendacity.

Is the bumbling and muttering Johnson an incompetent fool? Or is he a lying, cheating, dissembling Tory Buller Boy Buffoon. You decide.

Conway: Go To Jail, Do Not Pass GO or Collect £13,000

The continued rewarding of Derek Conway with £13,000 "extras" for his honourable chairing of meetings is absolutely disgraceful. We must stop this by popular acclaim. And stop him getting the maximum resettlement and pensions amount. Send him and his co-conspirators to jail, not to easy street.

Cllr Simon Ashley: Same Old Tired Old Deja Vu, Again

Today we have a disappointing response to Manchester's budget consultation. Perhaps people are reasonably content? Perhaps the local and regional media - such as the Manchester Evening News - didn't provide enough build up? Perhaps opposition politicians have poisoned everyone with misery and cynicism?

Whichever it is, we get the same old muttering from Lib Dem leader Simon Ashley. Who presumably knew all about the consultation and didn't even attempt to get his own minions to take part. Ashley is quite frankly hopeless.

Just look at Liverpool where the Lib Dem leadership are, believe it or not, twice as good as Ashley and his crew.

See them propping up the national table for financial management. See them getting the wooden spoon as the worst council of the lot. See them having less than one million pounds in reserves. Which must be about one day's worth of the city's budget. Which is not adequate by anyone's standards.

Cllr John McLeech MP: Wake Me Up Before You Go Go

Cheers to The Daily Pundit for the above CT scan of Buff and Leech and Vultan in various stages of arousal at Clogg's offering at PMQs. That was - purely serendipitously - about mind numbing drugs. Which is a serious issue of course.

Cloggy could do with some help with hair trigger problems. He's got up in the house with only one third data to hand. Why would he do that?

Not quite as bad as Cllr John Leech MP claiming to have "carried out" a constituency wide health survey. Before rather pathetic survey leaflets were even fully distributed. Never mind the usual half a dozen responses in.

The above dead on his seat look is absolutely typical for Mr Leech. Still sleeping off Roy of the Rovers exertions for the McParliamentary football team.

The Daily Pundit also has a mysterious Valentine for Letwin and Clogg and news that, in Belize elections, "Lord" Cashpoint is sportingly batting for both sides.

Whacko Waterson: Family Get Ducks in a Line

I'm not sure I'd have called this one "cleared". I think I'd have said Dave Cameron's mate has rather escaped by knocking his family's stories into shape like a proper authoritarian.

Nigel Waterson says he is going to complain about "heavy handed policing" which in one of those brilliant accidents of symmetry is more-or-less what he was accused of himself.

There are two ways for the story to go now. One, most likely, all the complaints and the like are quietly dropped, quite soon. Two, Nigel Waterson is found to have been completely wronged by the powers that be. Smoke without fire. Nothing to see here. Teenagers who said "and it isn't the first time" found to have been wrong several times over. Hurrah.

Faraz "Buzz" Bhatti's formal complaint of police heavy handedness has it seems evaporated. This was from when he was cautioned recently for inappropriate behaviour with his girlfriend at a carpark/lover's lane well known for dogging, car rocking and er, plane spotting.

Strangely enough the itinerant soul, who famously followed Tony Lit, Gurchuran Singh and Sajjad Karim into David Cameron's Conservatives, and is sadly parted company from wife and three kids at the "address of convenience" he uses for elections, has decided that discretion may be the better part of valour on this one. His pranks are already severely trying for the "personal vote" that is his excuse for not letting the electorate decide whether they want a Tory councillor, or not.

Iain Dale would appear to have turned off comments, links and the like on his strange assertion that Waterson has "been cleared".

Brown 'Kulturkampf'? Dale, Heffer, Vaizey Philistines?

Sorry to obsess people. But I can't let Mr Dale's easy recourse to lazy epithets pass without ... joining in.

Funnily enough it is often the "modernity" that Heffer, Vaizey and Dale label as Stalinist or Kulturkamph and actively affect to despise - rather as Stalin and Hitler did with their demands for fascist realism - that washes its own face. Artists like Gormley, Emin and Hirst are doing fine thank you very much - and the traditional figurative and "high arts" conservatives like - such as Wagner's Ring which Hitler famously kissed - that needs the public gravy.

A huge proportion of the funding from the public purse goes to those high arts and very little relatively to the new expression that is the lifeblood of our world beating creative industries. Not lifeblood directly necessarily. But through a perfectly invidious inspiration for those industries. Including architecture, advertising, music, film and television.

Personally as someone with an interest and some appreciation across the full gamut from high to low and old to new and popular to unpopular I don't think the balance is too bad at the moment but that if anything the "old school" arts are getting too much.

Heffer is a porcine Philistine and probably has little idea of where the balance of funding is these days. Are Dale and Vaizey Philistines too?

Iain Dale: DFID Pull Plonker With Viral

Ha ha ha. Ho ho ho. Happy Valentines! Iain Dale has posted an EXCLUSIVE on how DFID have made a video for Valentines that will "never be seen". And posted that video! Chump!



Seriously though, commissioned "publications" don't always get passed for formal distribution. Clearly Doughty Street would run virtually anything, but others have higher standards. This sort of thing happens under both parties of government. Some years ago under Maggie Thatcher's vile regime Manchester City Council commissioned a video about upcoming Job Creation plans.

Maggie "Milk Snatcher" Thatcher put this into reverse with a great axe taken to northern town halls, job freezes and cuts. Although the Manchester Soviet managed to avoid compulsory redundancies, the video had to be scrapped.

The presenter as I recall spent much of his time "on his bike" taking Norman Tebbit's advice. If I can get hold of a copy I'll get it published.

Bashing the Bishop?: Sunny Bashes BBC Instead

Sunny at Pickled Politics is peeved at BBC Coverage of the Arch Bish Mish on Sharia. He's right. They fell for it all hook line and sinker. One of the dangers of 24/7 news and evolving stories. Sometimes they edit the idiocy out as things settle down. On this one they went with the flow and showed little if any sign of having read the speech.

Not sure what Sunny would make of the coverage at Ummah Pulse. The ABC is seen as in cahoots with various liberal reformists UP don't much like. Interesting post. Interesting comments.

Auto Cue Geddon: Idea Whose Time Has Passed?

Iain Dale asks whether the day of the autocue is passed. And he wants speaking tips. So here goes ...

Seven Habits of Successful Speech Makers

First, write an hour-long speech which is mostly style and with little substance, with that being the sort of old time dog whistles that your audience love.

Second, re-work and re-work and re-work it and learn it verbatim until you have it off pat.

Third, spin only that you are going to speak WITHOUT NOTES. There is no content in the speech anyway, so, yes, spin that it'll be delivered without notes - more or less.

Fourth, make sure you point out you're not using notes at least a couple of times near the top.

Fifth, deliver speech and enjoy the media adulation that despite going into the conference hall naked you have worked your cock and bull off delivering the thing WITHOUT NOTES.

Six, carelessly leave a couple of pages of scribble in camera view and discard them on stage. NB You are a "memory man" so try to remember not to scribble these on the back of your 100% scripted text that you have just spewed out verbatim.

Seven, similarly make sure there are no copies of the whole thing lying around. Discovery of these will blow the idea that you have actually extemporised from a couple of sides of scribble. Or that "mistakes" in fact and syntax are in the heat of the moment. If you are found out on your one spinning point: "Without notes", the lack of substance will become evident.

I've seen Peter Hain making a few speeches in my time. Without notes or autocue and with. In the former cases he has never failed to make a joke about "no heckling" and self aggrandise about his armed Special Branch officers. And he usually drifts or indeed lurches off message rather easily.

While Guido continues to think he single handedly scuppered Mr Hain's deputy leadership challenge I remember a pre-emptive undermining of his prospects at the 2005 Brighton Conference.

There was his own inability to use either of the screens - of the type used to hide himself by a shy future PM in launching his campaign - without moving his whole head, neck, torso, body 45 degrees west or east like the Thunderbirds puppet he inspired (top). But beyond this the script seemed, from his delivery at least, to be alternately stalling and racing.

Lovely work from Gordon's people I thought at the time. You can have all the ostentatious armed body guards you want and still get mugged at the lectern.

Lib Dem Clayton Barbarism: Dropping Historic Cinema

Dave Ottewell's politics are clear. He doesn't want the Lib Dem councillor Mark Clayton's bessie mate to knock down the third oldest cinema in the country. It would be extraordinarily sad.

Clayton, the greyhound kicker, is intimately involved with the developer. He lists the cinema address and his "former" business relationship in his Register of Members' Interests entry. Along with dozens of addresses owned by his "former' associate, and a few - including Clayton House on Piccadilly - that he owns himself. Under challenge he admitted - to the Northenden Civic Society - that, contrary to his declaration, he works for and with the developer still.

Another Lib Dem, presumably ignorant of Clayton's involvement, has been continually complaining about the flyposting and decay. And a third Lib Dem son-of-a-gun turned a blind eye to the flyposting on this cinema for the venue he used to manage. Before that is he left - after 12 months suspension - under a cloud of financial scandal.

The local freesheet, and the regional Manchester Evening News had the story about this councillor who was simultaneously claiming credit for stopping flyposters and failing to prevent promoters at his own building from being the worst of them all. But for some reason best known to themselves they did not run the story, despite mentions in the Council chamber.

They also did not cover the man's departure from this highly paid job following long time suspension over an alleged tax fiddle. What's up with our press?

No doubt, despite all their deep personal interest and involvement the Lib Dems will try to make hay. Personally, I see no good reason to let the developer proceed with this barbarism. Let's tell Clayton's Lib Dem wreckers to GTF. The MEN should be campaigning against this proposal - even if the planners agree to desecration. Clayton's hyenas would probably just sell the site on for a huge profit if they do get planning.

It is not inevitable that an historic cinema should be dropped unceremoniously. It is Lib Dem councillor Mark Clayton's developer mate taking the piss. That's all. As he will with the Tatton Arms also. Five years from now he'll be pulling that down too. They must be stopped from this hypocritical behaviour.

Please expose him now Dave. Manchester Evening News. Run a campaign. Make him sell it for 50p or thereabouts. As a preservation project .. as he bought it.

Conservative Resistance: Those Old Habits Die Hard

Seventy Five Percent of Conservatives choosing to take part in poll on Conservativehome.com would not want Helen Grant, selected to replace Anne Widdecombe in Maidstone and the Weald; Sajjad Karim, top-listed in the NW MEP list; or Tony Lit, 3rd placed candidate for David Cameron's Conservatives in Ealing Southall to have been selected as they were.
Grant had helped Labour and only just joined, Karim had been a Lib Dem MEP but defected, Lit was seen hob nobbling with Tony Blair moments before his career move. There is a suggestion in comments that the fact that high profile Johnny-come-latelies are BME increased the animosity to fast-tracking.

David Davis Sleaze Allegations: GuF Brings Home Bacon

Paul Staines aka hammy blogger Guido Fawkes aka Mr GuF has invented a piggy index for politicians. Trouble is he immediately applies it in a wholly biased way - giving peers a fulsome three little piggies for maxxing their expenses, with the story he links to appearing to say these were legitimate claims, while giving David Davis a mere one little piggy for a £20,000 leadership donation laundered by two of his litter of cronies, plus a similar sum through his own and, er, Derek Conway's declarations. Or was it the same money tumbling through the laundry?

Once again it is a case of well done to the boy Mann! As it goes the Independent on Sunday's investigation points out more than Guido lets on. That Davis and indeed our old friend the disgraced Del Boy Conway made parallel/repeat declarations to those of the jobsworth cronies.

All good clean fun from David Davis. The man who made [insert]many complaints against Peter Hain, though it was his near namesake the nonentity David Davies who made the [/insert] formal complaints about Peter Hain. And who But Davis has perhaps spat out the most holier than thou sound bites on such matters.

These donations via MPs Mitchell, Herbert and Conway were of course part of the "defeat from the jaws of victory" campaign coordinated by Tory Boy Blogger Iain Dale and supported by GuF himself. Mr Dale is very fond of reminiscing about how very prim and proper that campaign was. With every last thing declared properly. Obviously not! To turn Mr Davis' own rhetoric on himself: Davis appears to make a liar out of poor Dale.

FOOTNOTE: For some strange reason Staines/Fawkes/GuF includes an attack on the broadcaster Jeremy Paxman within his round up of alleged politician excess. Now why would that be? Has GuF got some kind of a problem with Newsnight or something?

UNDERFOOT NOTE: Well worth dragging up all the Basher Davis references in Guido's archive at this point. 114 - count 'em. Including Davis' memorable rebuke that Cameron: "Couldn't run a bath". Ho ho ho. Oink oink oink.