The 110th Magical Mystery Blog Tour Bus Leaves in 5 Minutes!

Got some time to kill but don't know where to go?

Why don't you climb aboard the Magical Mystery Blog Tour Bus? There are still a few places left.

Click on STOP 1 and the Bus will take you to your first Mystery Blog location.

To get back on the Bus just click the Back Button and click STOP 2 to continue the Tour. I think you can work the rest out.

The Bus rolls out on Sundays and Wednesdays - enjoy the ride. If you have any suggestions for the next tour drop me an email by hitting the Contact button at the top of the page.

Mars News.

EU Car CO2 reduction fiasco.

According to the European Parliament website:

There are a staggering 220 million cars on Europe's roads and that number is growing all the time. The CO2 they emit is 12% of the yearly total for the whole European Union. This week MEPs debated proposals by the European Commission to increase fuel efficiency and substantially cut CO2 emissions within 4 years. In October Members called on Europe's car makers to meet even tougher CO2 emissions targets. In the mid-1990's voluntary targets on CO2 emissions from cars were set at 120g of CO2 per kilometre by 2012. Since then heavier and more powerful cars have made that target unrealistic. At present average levels are 160g of CO2 per kilometre. The Commission is proposing penalties of up to €95 per gram, per kilometre for manufacturers who don't meet the targets. The European Parliament approved a target of 125g CO2/km by 2015 and a long-term target of 95g CO2/km by 2020 last October.

This all sounds great, even if you are a climate change sceptic, cars with greater fuel efficiency are going to be needed with the predicted rise in fuel costs. However there is one glaring problem with the EU's proposal - and that is that it is in direct conflict with one of its own directives which requires all new motor vehicles (from 2011) to be fitted with daytime running lamps. Research undertaken for the Department for Transport indicated that the requirement for new types of motor vehicle to be equipped with dedicated daytime running lamps would result in an increase of about 5 per cent in fuel consumption. We have 5 million new vehicles on our roads each year, God alone knows how many new cars there are across the EU each year.

So that's every new car in the EU burning five per cent more fuel - just how exactly is that going to fight climate change?

Gordon Brown - Death plot.

A fifth man has been arrested in connection to the alleged death plot to kill Gordon Brown. The threats by a group calling itself 'Al Qaeda in Britain' were spotted by Anti-terror officers on a Jihadi website in January. The fourth man arrested on Tuesday is said to be a white Muslim convert. If this man is found guilty of being involved in a plot to kill the Prime Minister, what does it have to say about the state of the country when a white British citizen feels compelled to take such action? What does it say about our foreign policy (from a British Muslim perspective), and has the extension of the detention without charge limit to 42 days had any influence?

The first three to be arrested over the alleged threats have been held for 13 days and tomorrow the police must either charge the men, apply for an extension of custody or release them. At the moment it all seems a bit flimsy, the police have admitted that they have yet to find any evidence of plot to kill the PM, they are just investigating the alleged threats. Saying that, at what point does a threat become a plot? If you say "I'm going to kill Gordon Brown" have you already started plotting his demise?

Been down on the farm today - Longdown farm.

I took the family down to Longdown Farm near Southampton today. It's a great day out and we all would go again. Here are some pics, starting with our favourite little piggies (click to enlarge the pigs, it makes a great wallpaper:

Martin Clunes - Dogs

If you love dogs, documentaries and Martin Clunes, tune into ITV now for a look into to the life of dogs presented by one of the UK's favourite actors. If you missed this week's show, you can watch it by clicking HERE.

UPDATE: I thought this was a one program deal, but it's on again next week. Can't wait. Owning a long haired black German Shepherd I enjoyed seeing the wolves.



My beautiful girl:

Boris Johnson - Ping Pong is coming home!!!

I've just had the supreme pleasure of watching Boris Johnson giving his London Olympics handover speech. This is a speech to remember. Forget timing, forget polish and forget spin, this is how to give a speech. You too can enjoy Boris's speech by clicking HERE. don't miss it.

Poor old Gordon Brown can only look on and wonder how Boris makes it look so easy.

Thanks to DB in the comments for pointing out that it is now on youtube, enjoy:

The 109th Magical Mystery Blog Tour Bus Leaves in 5 Minutes!

Got some time to kill but don't know where to go?

Why don't you climb aboard the Magical Mystery Blog Tour Bus? There are still a few places left.

Click on STOP 1 and the Bus will take you to your first Mystery Blog location.

To get back on the Bus just click the Back Button and click STOP 2 to continue the Tour. I think you can work the rest out.

The Bus rolls out on Sundays and Wednesdays - enjoy the ride. If you have any suggestions for the next tour drop me an email by hitting the Contact button at the top of the page.

Joe Biden is poor bet for Barack Obama. John McCain now 7/4.

From William Hill:

WILL BARACK RUNNING MATE HELP STOP McCAIN FIGHT BACK?

Despite finally appointing his running mate, Joe Biden - once quoted at 50/1 to get the role by William Hill - Barack Obama is losing ground with punters in the race to the White House.

John McCain has been backed from 2/1 to 7/4 to win the USPresidential Election with William Hill, who have lengthened favourite Barack Obama's odds from 4/11 to 2/5.

'Hillary Clinton was the best backed candidate to run with Obama and had he picked her it would have cost us a substantial five figure payout' said Hill's spokesman Graham Sharpe.

PA Consulting - Memory sticks and ID Cards.

It turns out that PA Consulting, the company to blame (according to Jacqui Smith) for the loss of the memory stick containing details of the 84,000 prisoners held in our prisons, are at the heart of the National ID Card scheme. Makes you feel warm all over doesn't it? The company has been paid £100m for their work on ID Cards and they have received over £240m in government contracts in recent years. According to the Telegraph we (that's those of us who pay tax) are paying their consultants £160 per hour to work on the scheme - not bad money if you can get it.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said:

"The public will be alarmed that the Government is happy to entrust their £20bn ID card project to the firm involved in this fiasco, at a cost of millions of pounds to the UK taxpayer. "This will destroy any grain of confidence the public still have in this white elephant and reinforce why it could endanger - rather than strengthen - our security.

"Jacqui Smith cannot continue to abdicate responsibility for this shambles. She must at a bare minimum explain how this failure could happen, when she first knew about it, and what she now intends to do about it. Why did she sit on this information until it was dragged out by the media? When was she intending to tell the public?"

I think it pretty obvious why Jacqui Smith sat on the news of this data loss:

1. This is just another blunder in a long list of data security blunders that she and the government have been responsible for.

2. Would you (as Home Secretary) want the public to know that a company deeply involved in the ID Card scheme has broken security guidelines by downloading sensitive data, only to lose it?

I think we in the general public tend to think it's possible that the ID Card scheme will be scrapped, but it won't, the government are hell bent on pushing this crackpot scheme through. The only way to stop more of our money being wasted on this folly is to get Labour out of power as soon as possible.

Alyson Reeves, PA Consulting's identity management specialist wrote in the Financial Times (18 June 2008):

"The UK National Identity Scheme should not be overlooked. It is coming, and as the UK's 'universal' identity assurance solution, it will become ubiquitous in the next five to 10 years. Don't get left playing catch-up."

The sad thing is that even after losing the prisoner data, PA Consulting will probably keep their ID Card contracts.

Osborne's energy discount card will help pay the bills.

It's been a sad fact of recent history that the less money you have, the more you have to pay out for your basic utilities. So George Osborne's idea of an energy discount card is just the kind of policy needed to redress the balance between the well off and the not so well off. The card will enable those without a bank account to receive the same discounts as those paying by direct debit. George says this could help four million people save up to £100 a year.

The scheme has the backing of both the energy industry and Theresa Perchard, Director of Policy at the Citizens Advice Bureau. Theresa said: [The Tory policy] "offers to put more money in the pockets of poorer consumers by reducing their outgoings and providing for weekly budgeting to help avoid debt".

This is yet another great idea from Osborne's team, and it is just the kind of policy needed in these difficult times. Keep them coming.

Surely even Gordon Brown wouldn't bet on Labour winning the next Election.

Gordon Brown has started his twentieth comeback. This time he seems to be adding humour to his repertoire.

From William Hill:

Punters Don't Believe Brown Will Win Election

I'LL WIN ELECTION, SAYS BROWN - NO YOU WON'T, SAY PUNTERS AND BOOKIES

DESPITE GORDON BROWN's assertion that Labour will win the next General Election has found few believers, with bookmakers William Hill declaring 'We have not taken a single three figure bet for a Labour win for over a month. However, we have had to cut the odds about a Tory landslide, with them winning 375 or more seats, from 5/1 to 6/4.' said Hill's spokesman Graham Sharpe.

Hills now make Labour 3/1 to win the next General Election - the longest odds at which they have been quoted since Gordon Brown came to power - with the Conservatives offered at 2/9 - their shortest odds since they lost power. The Lib Dems are 100/1.

The 108th Magical Mystery Blog Tour Bus Leaves in 5 Minutes!

Got some time to kill but don't know where to go?

Why don't you climb aboard the Magical Mystery Blog Tour Bus? There are still a few places left.

Click on STOP 1 and the Bus will take you to your first Mystery Blog location.

To get back on the Bus just click the Back Button and click STOP 2 to continue the Tour. I think you can work the rest out.

The Bus rolls out on Sundays and Wednesdays - enjoy the ride. If you have any suggestions for the next tour drop me an email by hitting the Contact button at the top of the page.

Nick Clegg should Apollo-gise for this rubbish.

Nigg Clegg, the true master of talking out of your arse is off again, this time he says we can be self-sufficient in energy by 2050 without building new coal-fired or nuclear power stations. He has announced a massive five page (yes five full pages!) ‘Apollo Project for UK Energy Independence’. The main thrust of his brilliant plan is to "Source all energy requirements from within the EU by 2030 so that the country does not need to import energy from unstable regimes." Sounds good but if Clegg were to pay a visit to this planet for a short while he would realise that the idea of sourcing our energy requirements from within in the EU by 2030 is a work of science fiction:

From the EurActiv Site:

Oil and gas reserves are unevenly distributed around the globe, and the largest reserves are situated in politically or economically insecure regions (Middle-East, Russia). North Sea oil and gas fields have already been exploited beyond their peak, leaving Europe dependent on non-EU countries for future supply.

The Commission Green Paper on security of energy supply (November 2000) drew a sobering picture of the EU's energy situation. If no action is taken, it predicted, the EU's energy dependency will climb from 50% in 2000 to 70% in 2030. The particular situation for the main imported fossil fuels was described as follows:

Oil:

45% of EU oil imports originate from the Middle East;
by 2030, 90% of EU oil consumption will have to be covered by imports

Gas:

40% of EU gas imports originate from Russia (30% Algeria, 25% Norway);
By 2030, over 60% of EU gas imports are expected to come from Russia with overall external dependency expected to reach 80%.

Coal:

By 2030, 66% of EU needs is expected to be covered by imports.

To back up this massive five page document, Clegg points us to his Liberal Democrat policy paper 82 (2007) in which he claims that the Lib Dems will Increase the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation to require at least 10 per cent of all fuel sold on UK forecourts to come from renewable sources by 2015. Isn't this just another example of the Lib Dems living in cloud cuckoo land when we know the damage Biofuels are causing?

Daily Referendum takes a blogging break?

I'm taking a break. I don't know how long, maybe a week or two, maybe permanently. I've run this blog for about twenty months and it has eaten up most of my spare time - I work twelve hour shifts, so there isn't always a great deal of time to spare. The blog has been reasonably successful, but I got into blogging in the hope that I could make a difference. However, I'm starting to realise that his blog will never get the number of visitors needed to do that. 12000 visitors on a good month is not going to even register on the political radar. So if I do continue blogging after this break, it will probably be at a lower rate.

See you later

Steve

Very last Chance to Vote for Your Top Ten Blogs!

There are only a few hours for you to vote for your Top Ten Political Blogs. Voting closes at midnight tonight. So if you haven't already done it, please email your Top Ten Political Blogs to

toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com

Journalistic genius from Mark Steel. (funny).

I wasn't going to be posting today, but I came across this excellent article by Mark Steel of the Belfast Telegraph (Well it made me laugh):

Has Gordon Brown been replaced by a robot?

Oh no. It's got to the point where you start pitying him. Poor Gordon Brown comes on television for a press conference and you feel he's about to say, " Um, right. Er oh this is harder than it looks. I'm a bit nervous."

Then his colleagues, just out of shot whisper, "Go on Gordon, you can do it – go on Gordon, read from your notes, uh-oh he's wet himself." And Tessa Jowell has to go and get a mop.

Eventually, when he gets going, he attempts to rescue his situation by saying, "I believe the British people will see that every day I seek values, and the values I value most are the hard-working families of the British people. Yes, there are difficulties, but if those difficulties prove difficult I will value those difficulties 0.6 per cent higher in real terms than in any other hard-working country in Europe."

One possibility is that, inspired by The Stepford Wives, Blair had the real Brown murdered and replaced with a robot. And this will come to light when, during an interview, Andrew Marr stabs him in the leg and Brown says "That wasn't very nice Andrew, I'm in this job for values, val-val-values higher growth than Japan that wasn't very nice Andrew."

You can read the rest of the article by clicking HERE.

Guide to political blogging 2008/9 - Update

Sorry for the lack of posts today, I've had a job interview and blogging has had to take a back seat. Normal service will resume tomorrow. I do however have an announcement from Iain Dale:

I have had to bring voting in the Blogging Poll forward by a week to midnight this Friday, 8 August. This is due to our print deadlines for the book slipping by a week. So if you haven't already emailed your Top Ten Political Blogs to

toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com

... please do so by the end of Friday this week. The book will be available as a giveaway at the Green, TUC, LibDem, Labour and Conservative conferences. It will also be posted as a PDF on the Total Politics website and as an e-book.

Climate change storm troopers claim police smear.

Why is that some people believe that it is their right to break the law to show protest?

The bean eating soap dodgers (a little unfair as the police confiscated 10 kg of handmade biodegradable soap) are not happy at the Camp For Climate Action 2008. The police have found a stash of equipment near to the camp and other items in the camp itself. Gary Beautridge, the assistant chief constable of Kent police, said that while most of the people at the camp were peaceful, it was "clear" a minority intended to use the equipment for "criminal purposes". The happy campers say that they are fighting battle against Climate Change. They intend to carry out a "mass action" to shut down Kingsnorth coal fired power station - Saturday, 9th August, 2008.

One camper Isabelle Michel said "This in no way justifies the way the police are treating the camp," she said. "It is disgraceful to suggest that the campers have criminal intent. "This is obviously an attempt by the police to distract us from raising issues about climate change." No Isabelle, they are trying to prevent some of the more radical members of your camp breaking the law and putting themselves and EON employees at risk.

Here is a list of the equipment found:

An adapted knife,
A knife block containing knives,
A large chain with a padlock,
Bolt croppers,
Climbing ropes
Padded suits.

This is not the equipment you would gather to hold a lawful protest.

OK, let's see what the ClimateCamp website has to say:

Join with thousands in the battle against Climate Change, Mass action to shut down Kingsnorth coal fired power station - Saturday, 9th August, 2008. This summer, the Camp for Climate Action will be located near Kingsnorth, a coal-fired power station that pumps 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. We chose Kingsnorth, because while the current power station is scheduled to be knocked down, owners E.ON plan to build a brand new coal-fired plant in same place! Could there be a clearer case of business-as-usual, despite all the talk of climate change being the most important threat facing humanity? On Saturday August 9th, the climate camp will go beyond talk and culminate in a spectacular mass action to shut down Kingsnorth. Permanently!

What really gets me about this whole kerfuffle is the reasoning behind targeting EON and the Kingsnorth coal fired power station. I just don't get it. EON are demolishing a Power station that produces 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, and they are replacing it with one that will reduce that figure by 40%. While this is not a complete solution, surely to God it is a massive step in the right direction?

42 Days Detention - prejudicing trials.

The Lords constitution committee has produced a report in which it finds the extension to 42 Days Detention to be "muddled": "Far from being a system of checks and balances, this is a recipe for confusion that places on Parliament tasks that it cannot effectively fulfil and arguably risks undermining the rights of fair trial for the individuals concerned."

It strikes me that if you are a suspected terrorist, and the police and the government request that your detention without charge is extended to 42 days, then they are saying "we are pretty damn sure this person is guilty and we need more time to prove it" Such action would automatically prejudice your trial. Also, how can parliament decide whether to grant an extension without being privy to the facts of the case? It's a farce.

David Miliband vs Gordon Brown roundup 4/8/08

From the Telegraph:

Miliband's dinner guest raises eyebrows There has been speculation that Miliband could gain support for a leadership bid if he can secure the backing of Labour's lost donors. Well non other than the infamous Mr David Abrahams was invited to a dinner hosted by Miliband in the Foreign Office's Locarno Room for patrons of the United Jewish Israel Appeal.

Gordon Brown orders witch hunt against ministerial plotters Gordon is fighting back. He has released his hounds on his own party to root out those who may seek to replace him. It seems he wants to know who needs to be left out of the pack before he reshuffles his cabinet.

Gordon Brown hires personal trainer to get fit for leadership fight If you go down to the woods today... Apparently Gordon got lost on his early morning run in the forest because he still can't see the wood for the trees.

Gordon Brown warned leadership challenge could come within month Friends of Gordon have warned him to cancel his trip to China so he can fight of a leadership challenge. I understand that the Foreign Office has seen to Brown's travel arrangements. Slow boat?

From the Guardian:

Blairites deny plot to unseat prime minister despite memo leak and calls for new ideas Yeah, right.....

From the Times:

MPs fear David Miliband jostling may spark early election Basically, they are skint. One Labour MP said: “Everyone sees Brown is in a difficult position, and if we needed to get rid of him tomorrow we would. But there are no easy solutions, and relying on the Blairite ‘rump’ is not the answer. David Miliband is an awkward individual and has annoyed a lot of people, even though he is very clever. While most members of the Cabinet tend to stop and chat in the corridor of the Commons, he and his advisers tend to ignore you. It’s not smart politics.”

The Red Box:

Is this really a good morning for Miliband? The lefties think that the Blairite plot to overthrow Brown is busted.

From SKY:

Blairites Target 'Policy Vacuum' Former ministers are planning to produce a list of policies at the Labour conference - what a novel idea! Don't they normally just nick Tory policy?