Quick! Look over there!

In amidst the enormous kerfuffle caused by the McBride/Draper emails, the way that most left-wing blogs have reacted has been hilarious. We are all missing the real scandal here. OK, civil servants paid by the taxpayer may be spending their time concocting lies about Tory MPs and their families, OK, the civil servant in question might be one of Brown's closest advisors, and work from the next-door desk to the PM. OK, fine, but the real scandal is that Paul Staines isn't very nice! And Iain Dale didn't get to be involved!

But the ne plus ultra post of this sort is up on Bloggerheads. Wondering how much it addresses the issues?

Number of times Derek Draper mentioned: 1
Number of times Damien McBride mentioned: 0
Number of times Iain Dale mentioned: 8
Number of times Paul Staines mentioned: 10

It's almost like he's obsessed or something...

Labour List

It’s been covered quite a bit now from the right-side of the blogosphere, by everyone from Iain to Guido to Dizzy to Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, but I thought I’d just add my two penn’orth, having now got onto Labour List and read some of the posts, as well as the associated puff-pieces that have cropped up.

First impressions are, I have to admit, not good. Draper doesn’t really seem to know quite what he wants the site to be. The talk has all been about how Labour List should be a home for Labour activists – like Conservative Home. But then it’s also been that “the new site is designed to counter what he calls the "Tory trolls" who dominate the weird world of virtual British politics”. Well, which? ConHome isn’t an attack blog by any stretch of the imagination – it varies between a sort of Tory vade mecum for announcements, speeches and rumours (basically Tory Diary) and a more thoughtful series of postings predominantly on what the Tories ought to be doing (Centre Right). It’s not designed to excoriate Labour policy – there are other blogs that do that.

Iain’s is the one that will get mentioned instantly, largely because of his media-appointed role as godfather of Tory bloggers. But Iain’s site isn’t really an attack site – it’s more like what it says it is, a diary. Sometimes you get ‘what I did on my holidays’ posts about Audis, weddings and meetings, sometimes you get gossipy pieces about who said what to who, sometimes you get links to articles he’s written about policy or personality. But what they all are is written by him – Iain’s personality pervades the site.

For true attack blogs go to Guido (more or less vicious political gossip, from an essentially nihilist view-point. It’s a bit inaccurate to describe this as a Tory blog – more like an anti-politics one), or to Dizzy (geeky but perceptive), or the Devil’s Kitchen (really anti-politicians with extra swearing). But all of these are personal sites. Labour List isn’t – it’s a collective effort. So lets look at a collective effort, not on the right this time.

Liberal Conspiracy (must get round to linking…) is a collective blog started by Sunny Hundal. I think the aim is both to attack Tory and Labour illiberalism (rather vaguely defined) as well as to spell out progressive, liberal ideas that should be implemented. I admit I’ve yet to read a piece saying ‘the Tories are right about…’, but it isn’t a fierce party loyalist. It is, in fact, rather good. If occasionally a little humourless.

So there we are: four models of political blogging. The directory, the diary, the demolition derby and the (um…) discussion. And all of them are independent. All of them criticise their own party. And that tends to be what makes them interesting. I rarely want to read articles by politicians – you know what they’re going to say before they say it (Boris being the obvious exception). It’s when writers kick against the pricks and explain why their own side is wrong that it gets interesting. And Labour List? Well it is that most tedious incarnation – an officially approved site. How dull is that? Which would you rather read, Tom Bower’s unauthorised Brown biography, or Robert Peston’s?

Grooming?

Tim Ireland has been contemptuous of Iain Dale and the Tories’ argument that the police claim that Damian Green had been ‘grooming’ the civil servant at the heart of the current scandal.  Ireland states both on his site, and on Iain’s Guardian piece that:

Using Google to explore Iain Dale's own neighbourhood, I see that the words 'groom', 'groomed' and 'grooming' have been used dozens of times on his website (by Iain and his audience), but only *once* can I see it being used in relation to paedophilia. The rest of the time it's about politicians being groomed for this position or that... or about dogs or horses

Well, I think Tim’s wrong on this one.  It’s all about context.  If a barber talks about grooming he’ll be talking about moustaches and hair.  When a vet talks about it, he’ll be talking about horses.  When a policeman talks about it?  Well, here’s an experiment.  Try doing Tim’s Google experiment, except put in “grooming” and “police”.  Spot anything?  On the front page 7 of the 10 results refer to paedophilia or rape.  It’s all about the context, and in this context the police’s insinuations are fairly clear.  Ask the senior editor of the Collins English dictionary.

I know Tim takes particular delight in highlighting any and all of Iain’s shortcomings, real and imaginary.  This, I think, falls into the latter category.

Andrew Sullivan on Sarah Palin: for the love of God make him stop!

Just what the hell got into Andrew Sullivan this year?  His blog was one of the first I read, and I stayed sympathetic as he went from a standard conservative commentator to an increasingly anti-Republican one.  Hell, it must have been nearly impossible to be both a Republican and a vociferous gay-rights proponent.  But during the election he just got weird.  It wasn’t just the slavishly pro-Obama attitude, although that did make reading either his blog or his Sunday Times column more-or-less pointless.  It was more his shrilly furious reaction to Sarah Palin.

Now, there was a lot to oppose about Sarah Palin.  There was the inexperience (although it would be odd for such an Obama supporter) and the useless interviews and so on and so on.  But what Sullivan really hammered at was her pregnancy with her fifth child.  More than anyone else, Sullivan hammered on, and on and on, at the grubby little lie that “the real mother” was Bristol Palin, demanding that her high school attendance records be released, and that obstetricians give eye-witness reports of Sarah Palin giving birth.  Pausing for a second – what the hell gives Sullivan the right to demand that?  It’s grotesque.

When it was proved pretty conclusively that Bristol Palin couldn’t have been the mother – what with her being pregnant herself and all – Sullivan went off an a tangent – insisting that Sarah Palin was a hypocrite and a bad mother because she had amniocentesis.  Given that she is over 40, there was obviously a high risk of Down’s Syndrome, which in the event turned out to be the case.  In those circumstances, doctors will always put pressure on a mother to have an amnio.  And it’s entirely understandable that, even for a staunchly anti-abortion person, the certainty offered by an amnio is desirable.  But what the fuck is any of this to do with Sullivan?  Why does it matter to him?

Now you might think that this is all old news now.  The election’s over, Sullivan’s guy won and everybody’s happy.  Nope.

The McCain camp is now trying to dump Palin. But they picked her. And defended her. And we do not yet have full accountability. I won't relent till we do.

Give us the proof of Trig's maternity now!

He’s gone mad.  It’s like he has some peculiar fixation with someone, insists they spend all their time lying, stretching the definition while he does so and just won’t stop doing it well past the point where it’s become tedious and counter-productive and turns people away from his blog.  Good job that would never happen in the British blogosphere eh?

Britblog round-up

The round-up is here.  The religious are idiots (and misogynists to boot), those opposed to abortions are immoral, and everything's the fault of the bankers.The right-of-centre dominance of the blogosphere is clearly a myth...

The sweet smell of consistency

Stage 1: Sunny Hundal writes a post which says that making unscientific allegations that Gordon Brown suffers from a specific mental illness is the lowest possible form of politics practised by right-wingers.

Stage 2: Sunny Hundal writes a post which unscientifically accuses a right-wing blogger of having a specific mental illness.

Dedication...

Diligent this, but perhaps a little unsettling.

I just popped into Google on my way to scan Paul Staines' Wikipedia entry.

Each to their own, but surely there are better things to do with one's Friday afternoon?

Truly terrible - awful!

Is this the most corrupt man in modern politics?! Well, no. It really is a little nothing of a story involving an online poll being manipulated to create a favourable impression for the Tories (presumably among the staggeringly vast readership of the Western Morning News). But fair's fair - it was a rather dumb thing to do. But only because of the *serious* interpretation that could be placed on it. I remember rushing off to vote on an Australian online poll about the last rugby world cup (I think to vote for Jonny as the greatest ever player) - I don't remember thinking I was involved in a plot to defraud the public.

However, if it is thought that manipulating an online poll in a local paper is a deeply heinous offence, then to send out such an email was pretty damned silly. But I do take issue with something that Tim says:

Note also under comments that only Justin (here, over at Bob's) provides an example of someone other than the Tories doing anything like this. I've noticed many Tory bloggers and comment contributors making similar noises and playing this same game; they claim that the opposition is up to no good or guilty of equal/greater sins than the one they've just been caught at, but they never seem to come up with any evidence. Here, once more, I'll happily show them how it's done:

Right - well, apart from observing that Justin's piece at Chickyog is a long expose of a thousand and one manipulations of this type, this whole poll story rang a bell with me. It reminded me of a party desperate that their leader had favourable coverage whenever possible. It reminded me, in fact, of this.

The BBC closed the first round of polling for its annual Today Programme Personality of the Year award yesterday after discovering an "organised attempt" by staff at the Labour Party to distort voting in favour of Tony Blair.

Staff producing the short-list for the Radio 4 competition said they received an anonymous memo circulated to every member of staff in the party urging them to vote for Mr Blair. The note was sent by the Audience Participation Unit, a new unit encouraging members to write to newspapers and to attend political television shows, pushing the party line.

The examples that Tim gives of malefic Tories are the hapless Grant Shapps posing as a Lib Dem on a website, Iain Dale for, um, something to with ablative absolutes or something and a Tory in Guildford who voted 'no' twice on an online poll. Well, on that epic scale of irrelevance, I think that an attempt to mislead the *entire nation* on the *nation's most influential breakfast news programme* might rank a little more highly? I'm still of the opinion that the entire thing is amusing but utterly, utterly trivial.

Cor, I'm like some crazy political legend

You can tell this is a really good idea by the Tories:

The former shadow home secretary, who fought a by-election in protest at the erosion of civil liberties, is due to have a meeting with David Cameron next week to thrash out the details of the new job.
It is likely to come in the form of some kind of policy oversight role, with Mr Davis keen to make certain that the party does not slip from the positions he had established on opposing ID cards and detention without trial.

How good an idea is this? Well, it's such a good idea that I thought of it first! (Note: I may not have thought of this first - in fairness it's hardly a massive leap of imagination).

How about this: set him up as head of a small policy committee whose remit would be to identify the areas of policy and legislation where creeping authoritarianism and draconian state powers have combined to erode the British tradition of freedom and liberty, and propose either their repeal entirely, or their amendment.

Incidentally, there's one of those unintentionally lovely typos in the Telegraph article:

Mr Cameron will also want to ensure that his former leadership rival is given something to occupying his time and prevent him from becoming a loose canon on the backbenches.

I like the idea of being a loose canon. Though whether that means an inadequately fitted printer, or a clergyman with dubious morals is debatable.

Shorter Tim Ireland

Phil? Would you mind not phoning me please? Thanks.

On the other hand you could read the whole thing...

I am also only really likely to have problems with other people in the future because of one person and one person only; you.

(In case you have forgotten, you also published my unlisted number on your website on more than one occasion, but I'll get onto that soon enough. I haven't even begun to begin...) [cont. pg 94].

It includes Tim telling Phil to please try to get over yourself. Read into that what you will...

Slating the Tories, and other plans for 2010

There was an interesting article on Comment is Free by Charlie Beckett posing the question (admittedly not for the first time) of what will happen to blogging when the Tories win the next election. Will the right become emasculated and tedious (like the left)? Will the left become fractious and oppositionist (like, um, the left)?

Tim Worstall answered this pretty neatly ages ago:

For I think there's a fault line that runs through "political blogging" which isn't in fact properly appreciated. There are those who blog for a specific group, for a party, for their tribe. And there are those who blog in support of certain ideas, or ideals. The former group will indeed be liable to capture by the centre ("don't rock the boat old boy, not now we've got back into power again") and the latter will continue to scream for their cherished goals whichever party is in power.

Well, as far as I'm concerned, and despite the title of the blog, I'm no blue dog Conservative. I'll try and maintain my general low standards of disappointed commentary and snarky asides regardless of the party in power. I doubt I'll be nearly so angry as the Devil - frankly I doubt I have the requisite amount of bile - but I won't meekly toe the party line. Well, not unless they make it worth my while...

While I'm on the subject, I'll try and get around to the burning question of whether Ray Lewis was a magistrate or only approved for the magistracy, and why this horrific scandal means that Boris is doomed as soon as I can. Just waiting for inspiration to strike...

I know it's a bad time but still...

Now, as I said after the May elections, the left of the blogosphere were rather noisily triumphant after their retention of two safe seats last summer. They've been significantly less chipper after losing one this spring. Times are hard for the Labour party and its supporters, even those supporters that are ambivalent in their support. After all, whatever the failings of the Labour party may be, the evil Tories are a million times worse - everyone knows that.

So, the loss of London, the loss of Crewe, the worst polling figures since polling began in the 1940s, a leader less popular than Michael Foot - these things can't be very pleasant. Tempers are presumably fraying. Which is why, I suppose, Justin at Chicken Yogurt has been lashing back at all of us nasty Tory bloggers. What I don't get though, and I doubt I ever will, is the bizarre obsession so many on the left seem to have with Margaret Thatcher's death. In this case, responding to an assertion in that notorious Tory blog, um, The Times of India, that the modern Guardian

is far to the left of not just the Tories but also of New Labour, the paper's constituency seemingly that of the 'Londonistan' of mullahs and minarets. The Guardian used to be called the Manchester Guardian; today it might well be called, by fans and foes alike, the Madrassa Guardian

Justin says that really, it’s the equivalent of pointing at a cock and balls drawn on a toilet wall and expecting everyone to agree it’s the funniest thing since Oscar Wilde turned up his toes. It’s dire stuff. Except that there is a serious point being made here - and it is that the Times of India was, until recently, the authentic voice of India's ruling classes. This sort of comment in India's largest newspaper is interesting.

Anyway, what does Justin suggest might be the equivalent for left-wing blogs of right-wing blogs quoting an Indian newspaper?

Anyway, I must get back to my project for when Margaret Thatcher dies. It’s a photoshopped picture of her being graphically sexually violated by Augusto Pinochet and Milton Friedman. In Auschwitz. No doubt everyone will laugh like hyenas when they see it. If not, I’ll want to know why not.

It's bizarre. And it's hardly a unique instance either. Leaving aside Recess Monkey's unfortunate bit of wish-fulfilment last year, Justin himself had referred to this a couple of days earlier.

You know, I'm saving up all my Tories = Nazis 'jokes' for a rainy day. Maybe when Thatcher dies? We'll see how funny these right-wing gobshites think it is then.

When Margaret Thatcher does die, the reaction of the left will say far more about them than about her. Even now, the gleeful anticipation is just grubby.

Did I miss anything?

Perhaps not the ideal weekend to go sailing then. Labour's worst results since when? 1968? 1918? Livingstone finally expunged from City Hall, Tory vote shares hitting the middle forties, Labour getting wiped out in the South and Midlands, the Tories winning seats and councils in the North. Happy days.

Two thoughts occur. The first was a letter in the Telegraph that said, effectively - look how well the Tories have done in the election. Now imagine how much better they would have done if they had elected a right-wing leader instead of Cameron. It's about as good an illustration of the fundamental Heffer error as you could imagine.

The second was a look back to the Ealing/Southall bye-election of last summer. It was in the height of the Brown bounce, Tory hopes of a victory were unrealistically ramped up, and third place duly ensued. It was a bad result for the Tories, though a long way short of disastrous. Solicitous leftist blogs piled in to offer sympathy. If they were so keen to "hug a Tory" after we failed to win two seats, what on earth are we expected to do for them after their worst results in 40 years? The mind boggles rather.

Apparently, during the summer Tory malaise, Labour MPs were gleefuly texting each other the rather cryptic message "PODWAS". It stood for Poor Old Dave, What a Shame. I suspect that the S in POGWAS stands for something else.

Libertarians of straw?

The blogosphere has been a little quiet of late - not so many enlivening feuds and spats as there used to be. So it's always nice to be able to watch one develop. It all started with a series of posts between Peter Risdon, the DK and Mr Eugenides on the nature of libertarianism versus conservatism. It was, in fact, a thoughtful exchange, given that the DK is very strong on being a libertarian in a minarchist way, and Mr Eugenides appears to view libertarianism as a tendency more than an ideology.

In any event, Paulie, of Never Trust a Hippy, wrote a piece that attacked what he described as 'bloggertarians' (the phrase originated, I think, with Pootergeek, who is not currently blogging) for, effectively their nihilistic approach towards Government in general - or at least for negativism. The DK took exception to this - with some justification in my opinion, as he has written numerous posts in which he sets out alternative policies, and is I think involved to some degree in policy formation with a political party. As might be expected, he was as forthright in his opinions on the merits of the piece as he usually is, and a lively little exchange took place in the comments. Interestingly, given that one of Paulie's principle objections was that the DK's use of swearwords lowers the level of debate, the DK is remarkably restrained.

Paulie has subsequently expounded on this theme on the Drink-Soaked Trots page. And I don't really agree with him. In his first post, for example, in a list of policies that these purely negative 'bloggertarians' don't try and propose an alternative for, he comes up with:

• CCTV
• ID Cards
• DNA Databases
• Police powers in general (though the distinction between bloggertarians and libertarians is that they only oppose police powers where they are endorsed by a Labour PM).

Well, if you are opposed to ID Cards, and the DNA Database that is its prerequisite, there's not much that needs to proposed as an alternative is there? Just don't proceed with ID cards. This is, obviously, a negative approach - but that isn't necessarily the same as a generally negativist approach. But it isn't the philosophical nature of this debate that irritates me - as a confessed Conservative, I don't really have a dog in this fight - it's more the tone of the debate.

I remember it first from Pootergeek - in this piece - and it's the sneery nature of the style that puts my back up.

Now that is an inspired rhetorical curlicue. How can I translate it and still embed a clever double meaning like the one Justin rightly draws our attention to in the original?

I wish I could say I hadn’t seen its like since I was an undergraduate, but, with the state of debate these days, I can’t. Read the rest as we bloggers say. It’s crushing stuff. Turning on his PC every day to face criticism like this—its wit, its rigour, its scholarship—must have been what drove Matthew Taylor to resign.

I have to say that this itself reads like undergraduate humour - the combination of heavy-handed sarcasm and pomposity was depressing then and it's depressing now - all the more so since I probably once wrote like this as well. Paulie isn't very different. The fastidious sneering is both wearisome and pretentious, and I don't like it. Well, bully for me, and I'm sure he'll be suitably stricken.

I would note, just briefly, that of the three bloggers Paulie cites as true libertarians one is a self-defined 'classical liberal' - which is rather different.

UPDATE: Incidentally, this looks like it might be something of a recurring theme...

Anonymity

This isn't really an anonymous blog. It also doesn't (shame on you) have a particularly large number of comments, although this is partly because I don't tend to write pieces that especially call for them. When I comment on other blogs it's usually as 'Tim', for the rather obvious reason that that is my name. The whole thrust of the anonymity debate that recently gripped the British blogosphere was never particularly germane to this corner of it. However, Ben Macintyre's article in the Times today is helpful in the way it puts internet anonymity into a more general historical context.

Dizzy's argument here is that, essentially, the internet has always been an anonymous place - that it's your playground/kingdom and that if you don't like it, don't allow anonymous comments on your site, and don't visit sites that do. Even then of course - that chap calling himself Doctor Crippen (welcome back by the way), how do we know that he's really called that? He isn't of course, he's just as anonymous as a commenter called 'anonymous'. It's a feature of the internet, it's not possible to avoid and there's little point in trying.

That said, there can be little point in pretending that anonymity doesn't impact harmfully on manners. Comments on the internet are generally extremely rude. I'm, gasp, even guilty of this myself. If I were to discuss with Polly Toynbee the merits or otherwise of her articles, while I would make broadly the same points to her face as I do in blogging, I'm pretty sure that I would cut down drastically on the 'are you stupid or something, or what?' elements of it. Similarly, there was a commenter here a while ago who, while disagreeing with me and what I said, did so relatively politely - largely, I suspect because I replied. On his own site, which I can't remember now, I think he was rather ruder. One of the reasons why Comment is Free comment threads descend into the abyss so often is because there is so little response. The commenters are throwing their vitriol into an empty space.

So, ultimately, there's no point in worrying about anonymous commenters, or anonymous bloggers. If they write well, read them. If they don't, don't. It would be nice to think we could all be as nice on the page as we are off it, but it's not true in all cases, so if you particularly want to spread around opprobrious epithets, by all means do so - but remember that anonymous sniping was never a great badge of honour.

It's plagiarism Jim...

But definitely not as we know it. What on earth Travel Stream think they're doing lifting a piece of this blog and translating it into German is anybody's guess. That they pick an article about a cricket series between England and Australia 75 years ago is positively bizarre. Any particularly devout Teutonic cricketers want to explain?

Blogs on the right

Well, we've taken the glittering prizes eh? Tory bloggers are unrivalled masters of the British blogosphere: the two most popular political blogs are conservative, and the cutting edge of blogging is wearing blue. Hurrah and well done us.

Tim Ireland is dismissive of this (although I'm damned if I'm going to spend my time searching for the true culprit that, um, hacked someone's facebook page or something), saying that

there are civilised and sensible Tory bloggers around, but there's also a bunch of cheats that misrepresent the opposition's position, let fly with the most outrageous (and all-too-predictable) abuse, manipulate comments and/or retro-moderate with shameless abandon... oh, and typically they also make good use of multiple personalities... presumably so they may better represent that silent majority we keep hearing about.

Well, yes. There are indeed wankers on the internet (on oh so many levels). Tim's long-standing problem with sock-puppets (multiple identity commenting - making it look like you've got more support than you do) has always seemed to me to be an irrelevance. Comment threads almost always degenerate into pointless juvenilia anyway, with or without help. Of more interest is the idea that the right are 'destined' to be on top in the internet stakes. I think it can be said without too much exaggeration that this is the case in the British blogosphere at the moment.

Why is this? In my opinion, and this is scarcely an original observation, it's because the left are in power. It's much easier to write a blog on offense than defense. Writing pieces on why the Government is doing the right thing is only fun when it's an exception. Continually writing pieces on why the Government are great is dull for both writer and reader. Putting that more clearly - blogging is largely an anti-establishment thing, and the left are currently the establishment.

This is temporary and reversible. Read the Goldberg file from the 1990s, and indeed the Drudge report and the Instapundit and 101 other right-leaning blogs from the Clinton era. The wisdom at the time was that the right were on top, and the Democrats were just useless at this internet thing. Spool on through two Republican presidencies and the story is the opposite - Web 2.0 is supposed to be all about the Democrats.

There's a tendency of the right to cite the old PJ O'Rourke line that the left is too earnest to be funny - the habit of saying 'there's nothing funny about ...' when clearly there is, it's just rude as well. I'm not sure, however, that has too much bearing on this debate. But the hectoring style of humour espoused by, for example, Jeremy Hardy or Mark Steel isn't very well designed for blogs - it comes across as pompous and preachy.

But ultimately, the trends of the internet will all look very different if and when a Conservative Government comes into power. After all, Ben Elton was once the scourge of the establishment, and then became it.

Dialogue of the deaf

In Mil Millington's excellent things my girlfriend and I have argued about (the website rather than the book) he gives an example of the definitive argument that couples have:

However, though I can't really say what the most frequent argument is, I can have a stab at the definitive one. This argument illustrates a fundamental theme - a core issue. Because of that, it can be used in all kinds of situations. The details are unimportant; the following example may be 'about' domestic chores, or shopping arrangements, or 'sorting out of children', or any number of things. Below those superficial, ephemeral points is the true heart of the matter. The argument goes:

Margret: 'I cannot believe that you didn't do it.'

Mil: 'You didn't ask me to do it.'

Margret: 'Why should I have to ask you to do it?'

Mil: 'So I know you want me to do it.'

Margret: 'But I have to ask you to do everything.'

Mil: 'But I do everything you ask me to.'

Margret: 'But I have to ask you to do everything.'

Mil: 'But I do everything you ask me to.'

Margret: 'No - listen - the point is, I have to ask you to do everything.'

Mil: 'Yes - and I do everything you ask me to.'

[Some hours later....]Margret: 'I... have to ask.... you... to do everything.'

Mil: 'And I... do everything... you ask me to.'

Margret: 'Arrgggh! Listen! I...'

And so on. You see the problem, yes? The problem is that, for some reason, Margret is completely unable to grasp the point that I do everything she asks me to. You'd think that'd be a simple enough concept, wouldn't you? Tch.

Keep this in mind as you read the comments in this piece by Dizzy and Tim on whether the lack of video evidence of 'a sustained attack' on police is proof that reports of such an attack were 'embellished'.

Direct democracy

It's great fun this 'engaged government' malarkey isn't it. How else could such disenfranchised memebrs of the population as Osama bin Laden, Islamic Rage Boy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's goat and Allah the homosexual goatfucker get their views across to the powers that be? Oofy Wegg-Prosser must be so very very proud.

Achievements

I think I can feel justly proud that this blog is the first Google result for "Simon Heffer idiot", although quite why someone found this blog by typing in "Why vote for the Conservatives when you’ve got a party that is reflecting in its philosophy everything that Mrs Thatcher did? I mean it’s as straightforward as th" is rather beyond me. Hey ho.

UPDATE: Alarmingly, "Simon Heffer nazi" also comes here, which I think is a bit strong.