…when heckled by annoying woman. Film at fucking eleven. Seriously, as of this Gillian Duffy thing? I’m beginning to wonder about this election becoming far too American. Neither she nor the Prime Minister’s brief moment of temper are worth five minutes on News24, let alone all bloody day.
Edit 15:57 In fact, how cynical do we want to be? For the first time in two weeks, no-one is talking about Nick Clegg…
Ah, things are settling back to normal. I disagree with Iain Dale again. It’s a relief to see him return to his natural home among the right-wing FUD-merchants.
The stories of today seem to be getting a little recursive. Vast quantities of hot air have been expended trying to understand Mr. Clegg’s statement of the obvious regarding the definition of ‘mandate’. The policy story having been subsumed by a process story (“LibDems Might Win Something: shock, horror!”) it’s now become a story about how the policy story turned into a process story. There have been complaints that the parties in general and the LibDems in particular have not had their policies subjected to sufficient public scrutiny. So here’s some of that kind of thing to be going on with.
In general, I continue to be very impressed by the Independent, who are acting like it and clearly enjoying it very much. Hear hear!
So, there’s reasons why I haven’t talked any more about the process of buying a new pub. There are some things I am aching to say, and once I have signatures in the right places I’m going to have my self some fun saying them, but for the moment circumspection is still the order of the day.
I’m still buying a pub, it’s now near the south coast. It’s nicer, older, in a better location for passing and tourist trade, vastly better equipped in terms of cellar space and it has a back room I can use to start a brewery. The residential area could have been tailored to my team, and I am going to be very happy once I’m selling ales.
The best I can do on detail is that I’ll be within the catchment to use Dark Star as my regular brewer; I shall be making a feature of British-brewed, craft lagers, and we will be making a feature of a locally-sourced, seasonal food offering. I’m working my ass off, and something interesting is happening in politics, so my opportunities to blog are limited but from after tomorrow I’m no longer running the Pembury Tavern, so there should be some at least. Evening all.
[ Editor’s note: this originally appeared in a slightly shorter form as a comment on Though Cowards Flinch. ]
Disclaimer: I am not associated with the LibDems. They are too much Democrat, not enough Liberal for me to join them. However, I’m an historian by training, and learned my politics in the third world, so I can spot a bankrupt political oligarchy sustained by the vested interests of a corrupt plutocracy and a deliberately fraudulent media as well as the man on the Clapham omnibus. And I’ve been saying so on the internet since a hell of a long time before #leadersdebate.
The Sun newspaper failed to publish a YouGov poll showing that voters fear a Liberal Democrat government less than a Conservative or Labour one. […] (The Liberal Democrats have) taken comfort from YouGov’s unpublished finding that more voters would be delighted by the formation of a Liberal Democrat government (29 per cent), than by a Tory government (25 per cent) or a Labour one (18 per cent).
Only 21 per cent would be dismayed if a Liberal Democrat administration were formed, compared to 45 per cent for the Tories and 51 per cent for Labour.
In the 1990s I read the Indy as much as I read any other paper. They seemed to me to be quite independent, and I approved. I was also 16. It became apparent during the course of Back to Basics that the Indy was a fundamentally right-wing paper which talked a very good game but couldn’t back it up with impartiality.
But Simon Kelner’s slavering hacks have, over the last couple of days, performed so far out of that kennel that I might well have to buy a subscription for my new pub. There’s been a series of indications that the Indy alone of the papers usually considered as Cameron’s Crew might be thinking about regaining some honour in journalism. Then, as far as we can tell, James Murdoch decided to take a hand. The replying salvo is a vigorous expose of the counter-democratic and unethical practices of the Murdoch empire.
We all saw the delightfully inept attempt at GOP-style campaigning from the Murdoch empire and their running dogs at CCHQ. We all saw them trot out a different line from the YouGov attack poll in each paper, thus making it clear that it was a co-ordinated but unaimed assault with a single guiding will. Nick Robinson has confirmed that it was the Tories who orchestrated the media bombing campaign, which makes it pretty clear that it was also the Tories who put the attack poll in the field, using YouGov and Murdoch to do it.
Murdoch Loses Britain was a trending topic on twitter tonight. Too fucking right.
The Independent is causing feelings of respect and affection in me. I hope they can keep up the good work. Signs are good: Andrew Grice includes at the bottom of his article a step-by-step deconstruction of each headline in the smear campaign, with the true story summarised alongside. John Q.’s hat is duly tipped to a rare independent voice in the British print media.
Edit: 1357 The Indy have reprised their “Murdoch won’t decide this election” wrap-around, which precipitated this, with another, saying “Neither will Lebvedev”. Someone’s been eating his Wheaties.
About going to bed. The BBC have just given me another look at the debate over the nuclear deterrant. And it sparked a thought.
First, a position statement; having said #iagreewithnick quite a lot lately, it’s interesting to discover I disagree with him on both nuclear questions. I suspect that nuclear power is going to play a part in bridging the energy gap, while we recover from 30 years of crass idiocy in ignoring the sustainability of our economy. I do not believe in the utility of nuclear weapons inside a biosphere. Nick disagrees with me on both counts. Interesting.
22:00 Channel 4 News’ instant poll results are: Nick Clegg: 52% Gordon Brown: 31% David Cameron: 17%.
21:55 The next instant poll re: the winner of the debate is ComRes/ITV: Clegg on 33%, Brown 30% Cameron 30%.
21:50 The instant YouGov poll for the Sun on the debate winners shows: Cameron 36%, Clegg 32%, Brown 29%
I have been known to be mean about Iain Dale. Not today. Iain’s response to the negative turn in the Labservative campaign is principled, well-explained and (frankly) basic decency. It is a shame the Cameroons are not as honourable as Mr. Dale.
In other news, many things have been happening to me lately. I’m still buying a pub, it’s not the one I was originally trying to buy, it’s happening on a very compressed timescale and I haven’t had any time to write about it, let alone about why I agree with Nick. This is why I’ve only just noticed the two comments that went unapproved for a while, sorry guys.
I will shortly be able to post about the rapid and occasionally extremely annoying changes in the pub plan, and get some politics written, because tomorrow is my last day managing the Pembury; thus, by Sunday I should have woken up and will have a little time to write in.
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The view across the bar. 