Quote of the Day

"The expenses scandal is like the ex that keeps turning up and you drunkenly mate with out of habit. Transient pleasure, then everyone feels grubby."

-Gift of the Fab

Legg Lobs the Grenade

TB is busy trawling the Legg report. Live updates

here

.

Again just weeks before the general election, expenses are back dominating the news agenda. Looks like today's bell tower is going to be the Viggers flag pole. TB would rather we paid for all of our public servants to display the Union flag outside their publicly funded home than they were given food and TVs.

This is not the end of the expenses crisis, however hard the MPs want it to be. This comes to an end when the country gets to make their judgement on their representatives.

When is a briefing not a briefing?

When it's a drinks party. TB sadly had to curtail his attendance early at the CCHQ bloggers meet and greet drinks party last night. He was there long enough to hear a vintage Pickles and drink his fair share of the copious amounts of free booze. He hears it went on till three am with some epic karaoke.

He was most amused then this morning to have a phone call from Will Straw who was on the trail of a hot lead. He put some questions to TB about whether Eric Pickles had told bloggers they would now be receiving 7am briefing notes on the lines to blog and tweet about. Utter tosh of course.

"Evidence based" blog Left Foot Forward

have run

an anonymous email from someone who clearly wasn't at the event last night. Needless to say they have been pummelled in the comments section. Where is the evidence there? And TB was sure Left Foot Forward "don't do attack"? Of course as soon as emails were forwarded to the likes of the over excitable, near hysterical Sunny Hundal, the left were is

spasms of joy

. Finally the Tory bloggers were seemingly just like them, willing to puppet lines. Well sorry to disappoint chaps, the whole story is bullshit:

• No memo.
• No briefing.
• No evidence.
• No substance.

No wonder these blogs are gaining popularity on the left - they embody essence of Labour.

Ironically Pickles attacked Labour's central control online and mentioned rebbuting Labour's lies and spin and misinformation that they are so willing to peddle. Frankly the fact that almost everyone who was in the room last night was willing to defend what was said and dispuite such blatent lies from Left Foot Forward and Liberal Conspiracy is not evidence of a coordinated attack but evidence of how far wide of the mark these made up allegations are.

It is no surprise that this sort of thing has happened again. After a Christmas lunch for some online folk organised by the party, James Macintyre of the New Statesman made up similar ridiculous spin about the event. TB is surprised he has not waded into today's fun and games. Has this merchent of lies finally decided to turn over a new leaf after getting so badly burnt last time?

A poor day for the lefty bloggers, jealousy does such terrible things to people's judgement. They have exposed how in sync they are on attack lines and higlighted just how little evidence or infomation they need to spin out a nonsense attack. Will should stick to reprinting data sent to him from above in graph form and Sunny should stick to what he is best at.. ummm. Well not this clearly.

PMQs Review - Dave is Back

From the very first question on Brown's secret slush fund, the Prime Minister was on the back foot. He cocked up the joke he stole from Andrew Neil about changing policy through the day and he was clearly not expecting Dave to be back on classic form. And on form he was.

The Chilcot quotes, the Paddy Ashdown diaries quote and the nod to the fact Gordon throws his female staff around the bunker made for brilliant watching. Gordon was livid, Labour MPs were stone faced and even Darling laughed. He tried to fight back but was fuming. A fantastic return to form for Dave. About time too.

Dave 9, Gordon 2

Quote of the Day

"I think that's why we are down for best adapted screenplay - it's adapted from The Iraq Inquiry."

-Armando Iannucci talking to Sky News about In The Loop's Oscar nomination.

Really?

Sadly for the comrades, their leader is not on one of them.

Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear

Via the ever growing

Big Brother Watch

this image certainly livened up that post lunch slump. Body scanning became compulsory at Heathrow today. Something tells me Cabinet members won't be randomly selected for it though. But...

TB better duck for cover.

Verdict on Adeela Attack - Labour Guilty

Whatever your views on the

Kerry Out campaign

, be they supportive or dubious, no one can argue that Labour aren't rattled by it. As part of a coordinated campaign day for Kerry McCarthy, some seriously dubious allegations have been plastered across the pages of the Mirror and the internet.

Firstly the Mirror was tipped off by Labour HQ's opposition research bods, Labour can't afford much but they sure as hell are bringing in the dark artists. Labour bloggers and twitter users have confirmed to TB that they were tipped off by Victoria Street and asked to heavily promote the story.

Cough

. The whole day will then end in a phonebanking session for Kerry run directly out of Labour's Victoria Street HQ.

The Mirror piece is an extremely lazy piece of journalism. It makes a series of swathing allegations backed up by absolutely no evidence. Blogger MPTP goes into some legal detail

here

:

You would think that any journalist, let alone one from a left-wing, Labour-partisan newspaper, would want to include in information about the circumstances in which these CCJs were incurred. It also seems strange not to approach the claimants for comment – and there is no indication in the story that the Mirror did. Why wouldn’t you ask the claimant why the debt is “outstanding”?


I suspect I know why.


The central register of country court judgements for England and Wales is maintained by the Registry Trust, a not for profit company set up in the early 1980s. Anyone can search the register, for a small fee, and the credit industry buys the data in bulk.


One of the interesting things about the register is what it doesn’t contain: to whom a CCJ debt is owed, or the circumstances in which it was incurred. A register entry for a CCJ consists of the amount, the court which made the judgement, the case number, and the date of the judgement.


So…the Mirror’s story contains no more information than could be found in a Registry Trust search against Adeela Shafi, and lacks the information which is not present in the CCJ register? The conclusion I draw is that the only basis for the Mirror story is a search of the CCJ register.


If that is correct, then the terms in which the story is written may yet prove problematic for the Mirror. It is specifically said that


…£324,272 is outstanding – despite her being ordered to repay it nearly three years ago in July 2007 – five months before she became a prospective Tory MP.


This goes well beyond the contents of a Registry Trust search result. The Register does hold a status for each CCJ, either “satisfied” or “unsatisfied”, but unsatisfied is not the same as unpaid.


Unsatisfied indicates that Registry Trust has never been notified of payment, whereas satisfied means that the debt was paid more than a month after the judgement. If a debt is paid within one month of judgement (or the judgement is set aside), the CCJ is removed from the register altogether, and there would be no trace of it in any subsequent search.


So here’s the problem – at this point there’s no evidence that Adeela Shafi owes a penny, but there’s a very clear implication from the Mirror that she owes £324,272. I’ve set out above why I think all the Mirror has is a CCJ register search – which can’t support that implication. You can defame by implication, of course, and an implication that someone has failed to pay a substantial amount despite a judgement is plainly defamatory.


Has the Mirror exposed itself to a defamation suit here? It will turn on whether there is some truth in the implication, and so far there has been no comment from either Shafi or the Conservative Party. 

On a related note, why didn’t the Mirror bother to access the court records? From these they could have obtained the names of the claimants in these cases, and details of the circumstances. That would have nicely padded out the story – frankly, have turned it into something worth printing.

A damning indictment on a shoddy piece of attack from Labour. If it was a real story it would have appeared somewhere else, anywhere else even.

Now the KerryOut campaign has been an interesting experiment in techniques of online fund-raising and raising awareness nationally of interesting local fights. It will liven up again as soon as the election is called and the streets will be pounded. The fact that Labour have resorted to trying such a blatant hatchet job on Kerry's opponent shows just how low they are willing to stoop.

P.S. It's really obvious when you try to coordinate attacks quite so unsubtly. Why not just come out and say it? Why is an MP hiding behind kids online half her age to do her dirty work? Labour HQ, on behalf of Kerry McCarthy and her team are directly behind these unsourced and unproven slurs on her opponents character. And she doesn't even have the guts to put her name to it. Another reason for the #KerryOut list eh?

Another One Bites the Dust

Shagging Nigel Griffiths was certain to lose his seat, hopefully to the excellent Neil Hudson, but the Liberal Democrats are fighting Edinburgh South hard. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Griffiths has been at Gordon's side since he rose the dodgy internal ranks of the Scottish Labour Party and has always be willing to do the dirty work at Gordon's asking.

A somewhat surprising candidate to be caught up in the sex scandal he did, but Griffiths was bonking call girls on Remembrance Day on his Commons desk. Add the expense fiddling and general two faced slimness and you can see why even Labour activists

are happy

retiring to spend more time with his publicly funded wide-screen telly.

Westminster will be a better place without him.

Back Monday but...

TB is off for a cheeky weekend in Amsterdam. He won't be blogging, though if you fancy perusing the

archives

this weekend, TB is only a few thousand page-views shy of  a record breaking month. Also if anyone can tell him where in the city he might find this giant clog he would be a very happy bear. GPS coordinates in the comments please.

Jihad! the Musical

TB had a fantastic time last night at Jihad! the Musical. It's on until the 6th Feb and well worth a visit if you can still

get a ticket

. All singing all dancing holy war. Cracking stuff.

Tweetminster's Embarrassing Climbdown

Red faces all round for

Tweetminster

who have just updated their figures after Tory Bear yesterday highlighted the blatant inaccuracy in their data. The new figures are Labour 61,039 - down a shocking 45.8% on the original figures floated and the Conservative figure is 27,063 - down 31%. As TB said yesterday, there was a clear swelling of the Labour figure. Something Tweetminster were originally prepared to turn a blind eye to. No wonder the

intenational press

refer to them as "the Labor Tweetminster"

Alberto Nardelli, Tweetminster CEO, is making great efforts to distance Tweetminster from public affairs unit PoliticsDirect. Quite hard when their MD gave them £100k. John Arnold should ask for his money back.

UPDATE 15.11: Tweetminster are refusing to reveal the methodology which mean that Labour figures were 51,810 out. They are claiming that their model would be jeopardised if they revealed the info. However they are in danger of blowing any semblance of a decent reputation if they don't at least try explain how and why they got it so badly wrong.

Scary

It's the last thing anyone would want to find out first thing in the morning with a sore head. So it seems the tax man is now following me on twitter:

Great.

A wee follow up...

TB is hungover after the Peter Watt book launch last night. Great evening. Just a quick on to say Tweetminster don't like it up them. They have responded to TB's post with a pithy

response

that doesn't actually deny the numbers were dodgy.

Just like their traffic figures too. Embeded widgets that piggy back other peoples traffic (such at the Indy website) don't count as pageviews however hard you try make it look like it.

Point stands then.

Why Tweetminster is Wrong - #tweetgate

Self professed lefty Alberto Nardelli and co at

Tweetminster

have a pretty sweet set up going - essentially they are paid to sit on the sofa all day watching their Tweetdecks. A hundred grand of funding has bought them less than ten thousand followers on Twitter and an estimated forty thousand page views per month on their website. However the media is still a sucker for Twitter stories, hence why their report in to engagement by MPs and wannabee MPs this week got

coverage.

They do try to keep up a semblance of impartiality but the figures about Labour's twitter following beggared belief.

Essentially the report said the CCHQ operation has the most influence of the party machines, where as Labour grassroots use Twitter a hell of a lot more. Given that they have been paid so much to run the service by a public affairs agency

Politics Direct

you think they would have bothered to do their sums properly.

Tweetminster say

that Labour is collectively followed by 113,201 users (p4) - with MPs followed by 91,061 users (p9) and PPCs by 22,140 (p12). This assumption is based on two extremely unlikely factors:

- Not one of the followers follows more than one MP or PPC each.

- Not one Labour MP follows another.

Tweetminster are inflating the figures by counting people who follow MPs and PPCs together. It is no coincidence that 91,061 + 22,140 = 113,201. A simple look at any prominent Labour tweeter would show you they follow multiple MPs and PPCs, rendering the Tweetminster figures dud. Are these all counted as uniques?

Are the Conservative figure be similarly affected? It would definitely take a knock, but with many fewer Conservative MPs on Twitter (16 to Labour's 65) the effect would be far smaller. Most Tory PPCs on Twitter are followed by very small numbers so it wouldn't take much of a knock that way either. The idea that Labour are some how the kings of Twitter with a vast army of online followers takes a bit of a hit in light of the fact numbers have been cooked up.

Stick to the Wii chaps.

PMQs

There have been more exciting PMQs, but was nice to see Hague give Harman a good doing over in their battle today. Banking was on the agenda and Harman was way out of her depth, good idea from the Tories to spring this on her. Wearing a dressing gown she fell into the trap set for her when she suggested that Gordon's tobin tax proposals were a sign of Labour having ideas about saving the world again. Hague gently reminded her that these proposals had been slammed just yesterday by the Bank of England. Hague's concluding list of what Gordon Brown has been wrong, wrong, wrong on, clearly rattled Harriet who spent the rest of the session trying to whack the Tories with irrelevent pot shots. The Tory backbenchers were very rowdy, like school kids with a replacement teacher. A shaking Cable, as ever, failed to impress. With a bit of luck that will be the last time we ever have to sit through Harman standing in, but knowing Gordon he will probably find more excuses to miss the last few duels.

Harman was poorly briefed and the one joke written for her about her reversing was poorly delivered and flopped. The day was Hague's.

Hague 7, Harman 5, Cable 3

Night Fever

If you haven't seen Boris throwing some shapes then TB

highly recommends

.

A New Editorial Stance at LabourHome

It had been a while since Tory Bear drifted over to

LabourHome

and he only found himself there after his google alerts noticed that his televisual sparring partner Alex Hilton had decided to have a little go with some pictures he found of TB is his more refined university days. The last time TB saw that photo used in an attack, it came from Draper's office. Nice.

Anyway to cut a long story short, when TB registered to leave a comment he found there was some fun to be had:

Sign yourself up here

and have a go...

UPDATE: 12.24: Ah after an hour of fun, someone has clocked what was going on. Fun and games over.

TB is no Kate Garraway... But...

Caption Contest - Labourlist Own Goal Edition

Alex Smith editor of

Labourlist

doesn't exactly look "down with the kids":

Captions below, normal rules apply. 

How Low Will The Gordian Go?

Two fascinating insights into the mindset of Gordon Brown and the desperation at the heart of his government have appeared this evening. Firstly, TB isn't too sure about the background - he suspects they are lefties, but The Guardian is giving some well deserved exposure to the campaign group who have managed to get the Department for International Development to cough that the money Gordon promised at the top of his voice in Copenhagen as definitely not previously pledged was errr... Previously pledged:

Brown said:
"The British government recognises that finance to tackle climate change cannot simply be part of official development assistance. Assistance for climate change should not be allowed to divert money from the pledges we have already made to the poorest."

A bare faced

lie

.

So The Guardian had one good hit on Brown today, already preparing for the Labour Party bunfight coming after the election some hacks are willing to bash Brown and are forming new camps. The Guardian is in a real pickle, they would loath to back Cameron or Clegg but can't exactly throw their full support behind Gordon without contradicting what ninety percent of their hacks deep down think and have written - that Gordon is atrocious and should have been got rid of last year. Many at The Guardian knew what was going on in that plot, and many more backed it. It is as much The Guardian's failure that Brown is still here and has been allowed his torched earth ending as it is the Milibands of this world. It is a real shame to see on the same browse of their website, a Guardian hack still doing the dirty work of the bunker. Are you attacking him or backing him? A decision has to be made soon because sooner or later The Guardian has to stop taking and printing the vile filth, lies and spin that come out of the bunker.

Nick Watt normally has a good eye for the lay of the land, but he seems to have been given one hell of a briefing from the Brown bunker with

this one

:

Gordon Brown believes the Conservatives are endangering the Northern Ireland peace process by adopting a pro-unionist stance in breach of the bipartisan approach which dates back nearly 20 years.

As the prime minister flew to Belfast tonight with his Irish counterpart, Brian Cowen, to try to rescue the power-sharing executive, senior British government sources expressed deep unease at the Tories' approach.

Brown is attempting to broker a deal between Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party to devolve policing and criminal justice powers to Northern Ireland. He has told aides of his astonishment after the Tories convened talks among unionists at an English country estate.

TB is astonished. Firstly with all this talks of "English country estates" you would think some sort of Peel/Wellington/Emancipation battle was going on. What the hell sort of line is that?

Gordon is deliberatly trying to score party political points by stirring up trouble. Now TB knows that sectarian politics is relished in the inner workings of the Scottish Labour Party, but when you are representing the United Kingdom as its leader, you do not stir up a delicate balance of power with references to an English enemy to score cheap shots at your rival. And frankly the piece is a shoddy copy and paste of a one sourced smear.

So on with hand The Guardian are bashing Brown and with the they are doing his desperate dirty work.

What's it going to be?

Tory Bear Vs. Recess Monkey

TB had the pleasure of going up against his old cercopithecoid buddy Alex Hilton PPC and editor of 

Recess Monkey

on Sky News on Friday. He just remembered that he had recorded it. Wasn't his finest performance and both the bear and monkey both seem pretty grumpy. But don't worry they love each other really.

TB reckons it was a no score draw... thoughts?

Cartoon - Debating the Debates

Someone at Telegraph Towers Should be Slapped

A great spot by our baby faced Caledonian-Greek friend

Mr Eugenides

:

Might want to get some new online picture editors chaps.

New T-Shirt of the Week

Inspired by a commenter on TB's epic Sally Bercow post, he thought it was about time the t-shirts were updated. TB intends to transfer all the mercendise section over to a UK company when he has the time in order to save the five bucks shipping. Watch this space.

In the meantime the new t-shirt is yours from

here

.

The Tale of Sir Robin MP

Jonathan Isaby is on fine form over at ConservativeHome. He has drawn up the ChickenWatch

list

of all those MPs who are choosing to stand down rather than face a target seat battle against a Tory. All together now:

Brave Sir Robin ran away.
Bravely ran away away.

When danger reared it's ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.

Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat.
Bravest of the braaaave, Sir Robin!

Good to see Jonathan and Tim really taking the attack to the enemy and highlighting these sort of embarassing facts. More please!

Balls Cooks Up the Numbers

Those who have worked close to bullying Ed Balls say his only saving grace is his sharp intellect. It seems his maths could do with

some work though

:

Doesn't look like fifty activists to TB, making up the figures again Ed?

Mrs Bercow has Become a Problem

Why has anyone heard of an irrelevant Labour Party council candidate? Would there be this much interest in following her slightly off the wall diatribes against the Conservative Party? Would anyone care that she hates the Tory party she was once a member of? Probably not. Would anyone have heard of Sally Bercow if she wasn’t married to one of the most important, and neutral men in Westminster? No.

Let’s get a couple of things straight first up. Everyone is entitled to their own personal opinion, regardless of whether their spouse agrees or not, however when they use taxpayer’s money that they have no right to claim in order to push these political views then there is a problem. TB did not want John Bercow to become the Speaker, and although he thinks it is a shame he does not respect his elevated position enough to respect its heritage and tradition, he has however been better than expected at holding the reins of Parliament. He is still falling far short of the desired levels of expectation of the Speaker. One growing weak point is his attention seeking and media-whoring partner.

The mysterious Mrs Bercow has been spun as the soft influence on her husband’s former head-banging days, but questions still remain unanswered about this fabrication. How does this line wash when Sally was an active member of the Conservatives at Oxford? Also someone should ask her where she used to eat on a Monday night. She has been reborn as a Labour Party activist and is actively seeking a career in politics, TB doesn’t care what she says about the Conservatives it’s how she is saying it that is triggering alarm bells.

The public and parliament were rightly shocked and outraged by the appalling behaviour of Mary Martin who claimed thousands of pounds for taxis and flights on the taxpayer’s expense. Money she would not have had the access to were her husband not the Speaker. Mrs Martin abused her husband’s position for personal engrandisment, all be it financial. Mrs Bercow is just as guilty of abusing her husband’s position for her own personal gain – be it politically.

Sally Bercow is using her husband’s position to ingratiate herself with the upper echelons of the Labour Party. By becoming part of their attack unit online – welcomed by Kerry McCarthy, Harriet Harman, other MPs, and of course the delectable Ellie Gellard and other attack puppies, Sally Bercow is not only humiliating her husband with her crass obnoxious disrespect for Parliament, but she is also using his publically funded position to aid her own political career. So the money isn’t quite in Mary Martin leagues, but there is no doubt she is abusing her husband’s position for her own gain.

A minor detail that could potentially become significant is Mrs Bercow tweets from the web, she also lives in the Speaker’s taxpayer funded suite, her twitter site has an image of the palace she lives in at the taxpayer’s expense and TB will be verifying first thing Monday morning what he is sure to be true – she using a taxpayer funded internet connection that she would not have access to were she not married to the neutral Bercow to attack her Majesty’s Opposition, for free. A minor sum,but a important point.

No one would care two cents about what Mrs Bercow wanted to say to lay into the Tories and the right-wing press were it not for her husband’s position. Lots of people use their spouse’s career to benefit their own, and frankly TB wouldn’t care what Sally Bercow did or said if it wasn’t the most significant neutral position in the country at jeopardy and if taxpayer’s money and the integrity of Parliament wasn’t at stake. No one would know who she was and give her political career media coverage, if it was not for her husband. She claims that all views expressed are her own etc and that she cannot be judged by the fact that her husband is (barely) a Tory, but the fact is she is piggy-backing on the back of her husband’s job to aid her own career up the Labour Party ladder – a completely unacceptable abuse of Parliament.

Bercow has is own spinner, and he should make sure that this abuse of his position is reigned in before it turns into a major embarrassment and headache for his already wobbly Speakership.TB doesn't care what Sally Bercow is saying, but how and why she is. He would also love to watch the left kick off if she was coming out with anti-Labour sentiments while married to a Tory.

UPDATE: Sally Bercow got in touch within minutes of this post going up - clearly more of a fan of tory blogs than she lets on. She refuted only what was already made clear was a minor point regarding the web, she claims she has her own mobile internet connection. Hard to prove either way, but the principle TB put forward, in the rest of the post still stands. TB suspected this would be the lightening rod that would distract from the rest of the post, hence the framing of it as minor. She made no attempt to deny she was abusing her husbands position to further her political career.

Burkas, Sandals and Video Tape

From Guy to Sky

GuyNews

 this week is a special one and as Tory Bear finished editing up his Lib Dem investigation, a call from our sister station came through.

Tune into Sky News at 7 to see TB discussing the electoral significance of Gordon's Chilcot appearance.

Radio Silence

Apologies for the silence today. TB has been busy splicing up footage shot yesterday when he went down to Brent to pay Sarah Teather's office a little visit. Look out for this week's Guy News. It's going to be a good one.