Vince's Bad Week

After his disastrous Chancellor's Debate on Wednesday, Vince capped off a dreadful week with this:




Via

Tory Politico

.

Guy News: Inside the Spin Room

"You can't film in here..." Yes we can.

The Morning After the Night Before

TB is sitting in Edinburgh fresh of the sleeper and bleary eyed. Nice to be back and sitting reading the papers with that as the view. The splash is pretty much what could have been hoped for Dave:

How deserved it is remains to be seen when some more sunbstantive polls emerge in the next 48/72 hours. One thing to note is the pollsters aren't seem to know about as much as anyone else in term of what is really going on out there. They are up down and all over the place. A scary thought. Tories seem to be splitting into two camps - deniers and realists. Over night TB got a thinking. If we are set for a hung parliament, the Tories need to start preparing for it now. on their own terms, rather than when it is forced upon them . The Orange Bookers won't be a problem, but the left bonkers sandal wearing grassrooters might be. Clegg's whole message of change will be skewered if he chooses to prop up Brown. If sixty percent of the voters, as it seems at the moment, don't want Gordon there will be no legitmacy in his government. Will it be taken lying down?

The Liberal Democrats want to rip up the rule book in terms of the electoral system, and frankly if Brown is returned despite taking a thumping from the people, TB will be inclined to agree with them.

Lies On His Own Leaflet

Gordon Brown said he hadn't authorised leaflets telling lies about pensioners bus passes being threatened. So why does his very

own leaflet

 in Kirkcaldy say he will “fight against SNP cuts to the free bus passes”?

A complete lie. It is not being cut at all. 

First Thoughts

Brown was better than last week but that really isn't saying much. The novelty of Clegg has worn off and he flounders when given the level of scutiny his apparent poll position deserves. Clegg tried hard to keep up the "I'm different" line but frankly it just wasn't effective like last week. He was lucky with the closing statement slot as he got to push his effective line very well.

A much better performance from Cameron, he showed that passion and anger that was so devoid from last week's performance. However he still missed a couple of open goals. He had the chance to tell Brown he was liar over the inheritance tax cuts. Brown lied over the 3000 number and Cameron took it on the chin rather than slamming him and closing down the line of attack forever.

Who won? Well let the spin begin. A draw? Not sure... but there were potshots taken by everyone. No wonder Brown has been so quiet for the last few days. He was busy nailing those lines.

In terms of fighting Clegg, a resurgent Brown could put him back in his box. TB will blog again in an hour or so once the dust has settled.

UPDATE: + YouGov Rapid Poll calls it for Cameron - though stress this happened last week +

Labour's New Low

There will be apologies and serious rowing back from this. How insulting to every single disabled person in Britain. A future fair for all?


UPDATE: Just occurred to TB that Cameron's son spent all of his short life in a wheelchair. Is this really appropriate? The sooner Labour retract and apologise the better. Who approved this? McBride?

The Debate Live

TB will be tweeting live for the Guy News ANTI Spin Room. He is off Scotland tonight so sadly couldn't make it down to Bristol:



Straight after the debate he will be blogging reaction from his cabin on the London to Edinburgh sleeper.

Farage Opens Fire on Bercow

TB is donating and backing Farage to the hilt... so are many other Tories. Parliament would be a much more exciting place with Farage on the benches. Get involved and Ban the Bercow.

Six Reasons Not to Vote Clegg

So perhaps the Mail went a little too far on Britain's next Home Secretary,his speech does show an interesting mindset of someone asking to lead a country he is clearly ashamed of though. The Telegraph's sleaze allegations are a lot more valid. The Liberals are whining that it is personal attack, but frankly it pales in comparison to many of the punches laid on both Brown and Cameron in the last three years. If you can't take the heat...

Via an excellent comment from regular Hughes, lets take a look at some of those policy points.

1) Wanting to piss away our seat at the top table in the UN security council by dumping our nuclear deterrent.

2) Wanting to distance us from our strongest ally, America. Which coupled with the former would leave the UK about as globally relevant as Austria.

3) Wanting our business flexibility to be bound by arbitrary, homogenised rules designed for vast swathes of continental Europe, with vastly different economies and workforces.

4) For us to be financially and legally subsumed in a sovereignty destroying, anti-democratic, cronyistic, unaccountable Euro-superstate.

5) Wanting to levy a huge tax on people who, have no more money than they did before, and through no fault of their own find themselves in homes driven into a so-called "mansion" tax-bracket by irresponsible house-buyers, irresponsible lenders and an irresponsible treasury who let the housing market race out of control. People who have already endured huge rate and council tax increases for the same reason.

6) Supporting the switch to an electoral mechanism which make it impossible to not give at least one vote to a party infatuated with the tax & spend, big government, success-punishment idiocy that landed this country in the shit in the first place.

And don't forget all the nutjob whacky stuff their core base demands...

What Would Kerry Say?

John Cowan is the Labour candidate for Cambridge and

regular contributor

to LabourList. He used to be in the Lib Dems before he was expelled for being a sex pest. He then tried and failed to join the Tories. Labour welcomed in with open arms and even made him candidate:

This is strange given it was a complaint from Labour's Kerry McCarthy that got Cowan kicked out of the Lib Dems in the first place. Why then is she now refusing to answer questions about this and apparently happy to see someone who, when a political rival, she objected to, but as a fellow candidate under the red banner apparently fine?

Stunning hypocrisy once again from the Twitter Tsar...

Guy News: The Fable of Vince Cable

Apologies for the lack of blogging. TB was having fun with this:



Raging at the stupid graphics messing up the damn border on the Youtube vid but you get the idea...

Quote of the Day

"I'm not taking advice from a Labour politician"

- A fiery George Osborne on in the Chancellors debate.

Who Do You Want Answering the Red Phone?

Daniel Korski

has an interesting piece about Clegg's achilles heel - his frankly terrifying appeasing foreign policy. Made TB think of this:



Replace the words "White" and "House" with "Downing" and "Street", "Hillary" with "Cameron" and Bob's your uncle.

The Tragical History Tour

Two videos hitting the Lib Dems surfaced over night. One from the

Guy News

room:



And the other interesting one from

ConservativeHome

:



The sun is shining, Clegg is unravelling and ComRes has Tories nine points ahead. Haven't Labour been quiet recently...

New Tory Poster

Looking good:

Very good.

Clegg Gets the Andrew Neil Treatment

Since when has "err I live in Sheffield" been an excuse for redoing your kitchen?

See post below. No wonder Cleggy isn't taking questions from hostile print hacks today...

Throwing the Kitchen Sink at Clegg

With great poll leads comes great scrutiny and surprise surprise Clegg is already beginning to show signs he can't take the heat. In the debates he said in a rather saintly fashion that "there are still people who haven’t taken full responsibility" for the expenses crisis. While this is true perhaps Clegg should include himself on that list.

At this morning's presser he came out with a pretty poor defence of his own claims. "“It’s a modest, semi-detached, pebble-dash home, it was in a state of complete disrepair, the garden was a complete eyesore" - What would the neighbours say!?

Having paid nearly £10k in legal fees to purchase the house, charged to the taxpayer natch, you would have thought that someone who claims to want to clean up politics wouldn't have bought a house that didn't need a publicly funded re-sprucing. But no, Nick thought he would go to town...

Two payments of £2,600 on kitchen refurbishment were claimed for. The first ‘to supply and fit kitchen as plan at the above address to include units, worktops, sink / taps, oven, hob and extractor. The second for ‘improvements carried out at the above property: Plastering of lounge; decoration of lounge, sitting room, hall stairs and landing; Supply and fit new carpeting to hall stairs and landing areas; selection flooring and tiles for new kitchen; decoration of kitchen; cleaning as necessary; organisation and supervision of all the above work.’

You'd think that would do it right? But no there was more. Another £2,147 in fact for, you guessed it, his kitchen. ‘To supply and fit pipework and new waste pipe to pantry for washing machine, hack off and re-plaster kitchen walls. Supply and fit laminate flooring, boxing to pipes under boiler and tiles to kitchen.’

And what about that eyesore outside? Nothing that £4k of gardening didn't fix. In March 2008, his gardener even wrote a summary of his ‘plan of attack’ for the year, which was to weed the front garden and keep up ‘pruning around back’. Such a good service!

Let's not forget the year he claimed 101% of the mortgage limit. At least he didn't have to re-mortgage his house for his kitchen repairs...

Making Your Mind Up

The things TB does for his good buddy TV's Shane Greer...



No sniggering at the back.

The City Speaks

Some interesting factoids out of Osborne's office this evening:

A poll

of senior investors at institutions managing a total of £1.75 trillion in assets has shown that:

• 77% think that a Labour victory or hung Parliament could lead to a downgrading of the UK’s sovereign credit rating.
• 74% think that a Labour victory or hung Parliament could lead to a fall in the value of sterling.
• 55% think that a Labour victory or hung Parliament could lead to a long term rise in interest rates.
• 68% think that a Conservative majority is most likely to lead to a rise in the stock market.

Nuff said.

Lib Dem Staffer Fired for Internet Tirade

Uber-clean and shiny Lib Dems have been left with red faces today after they were

forced

to fire a staffer for his tirades against religious people. Adam Webb wrote on his Facebook page that he wished "all religious people to just f**k off". He also said certain people should be "banned from breeding", including "vile women with too many kids". Nice.