baldysblog.co.uk

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

As a rather clear sign of what the public think about Local Elections generally, a turnout of under 30% on Thursday rather paints the picture all too well. The truth of course tells us absolutely nothing of any value because only those with some kind of commitment and/or anger, will bother to turn out. In this sense, it is rather like those unreliable “satisfaction surveys” on owning particular models of cars.

The results are always suspect because the only people who bother filling in the surveys are those wanting to ‘justify’ their original purchase decision or, those who have had reliability issues and/or bad customer service who want to give the brand a severe kicking. Whatever the motive, the results are unreliable to say the least and of no use in your decision about what car to buy next yourself.

Read the rest of this entry »

Many years ago when I was considerably younger, a history teacher in order to illuminate the topic posed a question concerning a specific event we were looking at: “In whose interest was it ?” Over the years when faced with complex and obscure situations, I have often applied that same question myself and do again today with regard to the witch hunt that is being built around the Culture Secretary.

Whether Mr Hunt is guilty of any impropriety or breach of the “Ministerial Code”, I don’t know but the amount of fuss in the Media generally is suspicious. As the Media is entirely an incestuous industry, many of the staff will have worked for various other titles in the past and Leveson is grinding finely with an awful more yet to come. It poses the question in my mind that the “Hunt Witch Hunt” may well be a diversion, a Red Herring built upon trying to obscure the truth…

Read the rest of this entry »

The reality is that to the majority of British people and no doubt like our elections to others, foreign Presidential/Government Elections are interesting but also “rather alien” in their own way too. This is how we mainly view the current French Presidential election from this side of the Channel. Of course this is not totally true for all inhabitants of these isles, we apparently have such a large and mainly young French population that they have their own representation !

As an Englishman I can speculate on who I favour but I don’t have an emotional attachment to any candidate nor a proper understanding of their political parties. Sarkozy seems always mercurial and often odd in his reactions, snubbing Cameron at an EU Summit and yet coming through whole heartedly over the Libya Campaign.

Read the rest of this entry »

Although I am sure that something will spark me off again, sooner rather than later, I find our current political scene amazingly flat, totally boring and not worth too much effort to write about. I even feel sorry for the Media struggling to create drama out of very little, Greg’s Pasties and so on, how boring, boring boring.

We have the Local Elections which should see a fairly big swing to Labour. This will not be due to the ‘charms’ of Ed Miliband but rather that the public normally likes to vote against the incumbent party in Government when it comes to the mid term Local Elections. Of course the “buggeration factor” will be what happens to the LibDem vote…

Read the rest of this entry »

John Rentoul wrote a mildly interesting article in the Independent on Sunday concerning Nick Clegg and basically suggesting that he is tarred by being in the Coalition. Whilst certainly that seems to be correct, according to the pollsters, the LibDems have lost a lot of support since joining the Coalition Government, it is likely not the whole story.

I don’t think that it is quite as simple as that…”They sold out over tuition fees…” and such like phrases, it is more to do with the historical nature of their support I suspect. However, whilst I was thinking about Nick Clegg, it led me to ponder the nature of political life “At the Top” and how fleeting it all is…

Read the rest of this entry »

Although I find the “reader’s comments” on the Telegraph these days, increasingly shrill and stupid, apart from the sheer ‘fun’ of BoJo’s Monday column, Benedict Brogan is also a wonderful “fresh breath” in the dens of the “Right Wing Nutters of the Telegraph”.

He wrote an interesting piece the other day in which he asked, “Where will the voters come from in order to get Cameron re-elected as PM ?” It is an excellent piece which you can read here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100140226/where-are-the-voters-who-will-turn-david-cameron-into-a-winner-in-2015/ But more than that, he raised a series of interesting questions too…

Read the rest of this entry »

A journalist I like John Rentoul writes a regular piece for The Independent on Sunday and normally he is of a high standard but this week, whilst the execution was poor, some of the ideas and themes behind it were quite good and thought provoking. Read it for yourself here: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/john-rentoul/john-rentoul-the-jelly-pm-may-wobble-yet-7174366.html

The essence of what John Rentoul was writing about is trying to “define” David Cameron in terms of what he stands for and in this, describes him as a jelly that is yet to set which would go down quite well with the average ‘Lefty reader’ of the Independent but I suspect, rather misses the whole point concerning the current political scene where political dogma is not welcome. In this sense and like all good politicians, David Cameron is a man of his times.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was quite struck by a couple of pieces in The Telegraph by Benedict Brogan. In the first of which he was giving his “take” on the tactics being employed by David Cameron to remain in power after the 2015 General Election.http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100134556/why-wont-ministers-speak-up-for-david-cameron/

Whilst I found his article interesting and in a sense, “timely”, I am not too sure that I agree with it all in the sense that whilst for now, that may be an ‘intelligent guess’, reality means that as it is as all such things, a moving target or a “World in Motion…”, and how the game plays out over the next 3 years, may well be very different…

Read the rest of this entry »

The other day Ed Balls admitted that if Labour came to power they would not promise to reverse the cuts in public expenditure currently being made by the Coalition Government. Frankly, the only comment one can make to that is “About time !” The reality is if and when Labour next comes to power, the political weather and economic climate will have changed, inevitably.

Although right now both this and the World generally face some difficult financial issues, these are perhaps just symptoms of other problems rather than the core disease. For a country like the UK, we are probably looking at a long term decline that started during the First world War which coincides with the rise of the Labour Party. One could speculate that solving this decline could also coincide with its (Labour’s), decline just as Communism collapsed with the Berlin Wall.

Read the rest of this entry »

At this time of year, the weekend before Christmas and the New Year, the ‘Media’ is full of “End of Year Perspectives” of one sort or another which generally manage to be totally appalling as the Editorial Staff “Make for the XMAS Hills”. This will be followed by two weekend’s worth of “Sunday Papers” that contain no news and were largely constructed, weeks ago to cover the total absence of any staff on the news desks…all being off on holiday ‘jollies’ whilst the proprietors of the “Titles” still want an income – total bullshit !

To add to that we have the death of a “noted journalist who was an atheist” called Christopher Hitchens and is ‘intimately missed’ by all the other media luvvies, a guaranteed recipe for maudlin sentimentality over a largely mediocre talent if past experience is to go by. Where shall I start ? With the dead atheist of course…

Read the rest of this entry »