Labour invites bloggers to minister's briefing

Although quick off the mark we doubt we’ll be the first to blog with reaction to the PM’s disastrous performance just now on the Andrew Marr Show!

Evasive, self-serving, indecisive – in fact all we’ve come to regard as his trademarks, but in spades this time.

Like us. viewers will have been shouting at the screen for Marr to say something like, “No Prime Minister. YOU listen please.”
Or to have the polling facts on hand showing the precise % of the public who DO want an early general election rather than, as this man in denial states, for him to ‘clean up the system first’ (repeated parrot-like ad nauseum l!). Marr also let him off the hook on answering whether he will be appointing more cronies to the Lords.
This was very poor journalism given the heights to which the Telegraph has risen and license payers and the electorate deserve far better.

No doubt we – and all your readers here – will have more to add later and we are gathering at lunchtime to watch the re-run together. This wretched Prime Minister is out of control and despite today’s wonderful sunshine we feel a heavy cloud hanging over our nation.

While the Prime Minister doesn't present himself as confident and relaxed returning that with barracking and screaming for an election can be a little arrogant and self-serving. Politics and the internet is filled with bathroom singers - people who think they sound like Elvis in the shower but couldn't hold the mike on stage. While I agree the Prime Minister could do better I'd like to see some of you mouths have a go and see how you hold up.

The PM did good. (The Andrew Marr Show)...

Any comment on the new poll that will appear in the Sunday Telegraph tomorrow putting Labour in 3rd Place?

What is Brown going to do to bring the party back? Or is this all a ploy to ensure they don't have to deal with the economic mess he's made?

Polls don't mean a thing, and mean even less in an over-competitive and poll concious environment. Mostly, they just obscure the truth and become a self-fulfilling thing. That's why the thickie Cameron never talks about policy and waves polls around like a shiny piece of tinsel when they're favourable. He's the king of dumbed down populism, like George W. Bush, and an equal diaster in waiting.

Politics, business, and the media have got a little too caught up in their plans and enthusiasms. The reason why we had the economic crisis, job loses and hysteria, habitual and reactive approaches, and anger and fear at change, is fantastically simple. People accumulate cliche and anxieties. These play back in their own minds, and they project more mind on mind like recording from one increasingly bad video tape to another. This is why Zen recommends people just let go.

If Labour continue to reason in cliche and shrink away from bad news like a sheet of polythene too close to a fire people will continue to perceive they're a broken party with the whiff of death about it. If Labour realises that merely by letting go they can break the cause and effect cycle they can increase in confidence, relax, and begin to accumulate success like gangbusters. Of course, saying it, perceiving it, and doing it are another thing.

Mark wasted an opportunity to examine Jack Straws presentation by writing a lazy article of bloggers talking about bloggers. Mark is a "new media strategist" and editor. Um, yeah. Whatever.

I looked up 'Labour Home' just to see what the editing was like and they've changed the platform to Wordpress. Why didn't anyone mention that in here? That's before we get into the the still duff design and lack of appreciation for people's feedback.

British business is screwing itself and Labour are being hammered in the polls while worker stress is off the dial. This is all connected. Yeah, I know doing anything well is hard but folks can't stop making life harder for themselves. This is dumb.

i have to say, i wouldnt cross the road to see some of the low lifes in this cabinet. Chubby-bottomed balls, for example, so tight fisted he even claimed for a poppy wreath on expenses despite him and his wife both claiming s.h.a. For the same property

I'm amazed that you can worry about poppy wreathes (or that the BBC leads on a £5 church donation) - if they were for an official function rather than personal use. Why ignore the £900 pink laptop purchased just before christmas by a tory ex-minister?

The telegraph has been allowed to dictate the headlines for too long. The government should publish the whole file and let all of the media decide what we would find interesting - we would certainly avoid the biased dripfeeding that way. Are you listening Gordon?

Sanjay, don't you understand that it is, quite often, the cheapness (in both senses of the word) that upset people so much?. Here we have some idiiotic old fool, who has never amounted to much claiming back a £5 church donation. Doesn't that say something about the paltry tight-fisted chracter of the man, the low cheapness? That man earns £64K Balls gets a full ministers salary. Are these people really of thre sort of moral character that you want to see in Parliament?

The pink laptop and so many other items are of course just as unacceptable.

If you can find it acceptable that somebody earning a large salary - three times the national wage, should be low enough to try to claim back £5 then I truly feel sorry for you and your sense of personal morality.

Actually, even if, arguendo, Yeo did buy a pink laptop as a present on expenses (and at the moment that's only a supposition: perhaps he just likes pink? Perhaps it was for use around the house and was cheaper because of the colour?), that's a far less serious offence than claiming five quid that you put into a church offering. If you can't see why, then it's no wonder that Labour's moral compass is having difficulties.

Let's spell this out in words of a few syllables as possible. A Labour Minister went to a church. At the end of the service, the collection plate came around. He put in a fiver (approximately ten minutes' pay). After the service, he made a note of the fact that he'd put in a fiver, and wrote a letter to the Fees Office to reclaim it.

A fiver. A church offering.

It's one of the the most mean-minded, money-grabbing, immoral stories so far. I can quite imagine that people might have their heads turned by the idea that they can claim twenty grands' worth of building expenses. At least it's venality on a comprehensible scale. But to go to the effort to claim for a church offering of a fiver? How stupid, how small-minded do you have to be? Does he claim for a quid he puts in the RNLI box as well? Does he claim for his Labour Party membership?

And don't give me all that `the Tories are worse' crap. The Labour Party, rightly, says that the Tories are people you shouldn't trust with the levers of government. How come they're then a moral standard to compare with?

It was even worse than that, Tokyo. Cook actually obtained a RECEIPT for the £5 which suggests his expenses claim was not a mistake but a deliberate action. Disgusting, isn't it?

It might not have been the right thing to do but itsa far less serious than the laptop or the £180k cgt not paid to give just two examples from todays paper - so why focus on the fiver?

I can see why his office might have put the claim in if it was an official engagement - give him the benefit of the doubt as you seem eager to do with the tories.

One thing I noticed with the Damien Green affair was how some people would lift out a point and blow it up while playing down more serious affairs. These factoids inlucding stuff that wasn't true were repeated ad-nauseum while the whiners (who are almost always the usual suspect) high-fived each other.

It stood out to me at the time as I readpretty much everything while that story was burning. The funny thing is the people who were pushing the factoids the loudest often didn't know a damn thing about what was going on but just spinning anything if they thought it would damage Labour and cheer on their own mob.

I can't help but think this is another take a swipe at Labour then blame the victim routine. The Telegraph very cleverly rode the wave of hysteria and was careful to lead with Labour. Now every time expenses are mentioned people blame Labour even if the example is minor while Tory example is beyond the pale. Marketers call this positioning.

People often don't think while they're angry and run with the crowd. Yes, Labour made mistakes and deserve some ticking off but a lot of the blindness and emotionalism is generation in Tory HQ. It's not done to inform people or make them feel happy , which one supposes is part of good governance, but to dumb down and inflame. So much for the party of opportunity and community.

Whether you're talking about hard economics, society, or personal development calm is an important part of success. The Tories have done their best to confuse and scare people, make unsustainable claims and pretend to be people's friend, and disrupt and undermine governance. This is not the action of a hero but the action of a toxic neighbour. If they weren't toffing it in parliament they'd get an ASBO.

"the party of opportunity and community"



This is an election winning line.
excellent.


"Beyond totally leaving tribalism behind" - now we just need a party.

There's times when someone takes a swipe that takes advantage and is beyond the pale. The Telegraph isn't acting in the public interest - it's just after headlines and a quick profit. I've quit refering to the Telegraph or reading articles people recommend online. People may like to consider doing the same and quit buying products from its advertisers.

I hear Jeremy Paxman thinks the British are barbarians. I agree, the Anglo-Saxon mindset has problems. Cameron's tub thumping, an out of control media, and the online mob of thrill seekers is part and parcel of that culture. As long as the controlling and hysterical attitudes like that continue Britain will never change. You can't fight these things but you can ignore them.

Charles, what the Telegraph is doing is most definately in the public interest. If they hadn't exposed the whole dirty saga - and Tories as wellas labour politicians get fingered, they would have gone on in their own sweet way and we would have been none the wiser.

Yes they were going to release "SOME" of the info in July, but it would have been heavilly bedowlerised. We wouldn't have known about Blears £2.50 Kit Kat, or Kirkbrides £50,000 extension or ... well take your pick there are enough examples to choose from. They would still have been on their high horses of moral superiority, now we know what a pack of lying cheating dishonest scumbags some of them are. We can also see what Brown has done about it - nothing.

"He then did a 5 minute summary of the choice facing the electorate on law and order. We’d all been handed an A4 document beforehand with Labour’s achievements on crime down one side and the Tories shortcomings on the other and his talk was a summary of that."


They're pitiful aren't they? Did Jack remember to tell you what a good idea Iraq was?

I guess it's good they're doing it but it's a shame bloggers can't ask questions.