Against the Odds - The Better Version

Yes it's over the top, yes your average Massachusetts resident will scorn, but yes this is awesome:




A two bottle lunch and TB is ready to man the barricades - the Fighters and Believers! 

The Internet Election

TB went along to the Delib/Henry Jackson/Messagespace debate last night about whether the internet or policy will win the day in May. One thing is very clear immediately. Rishi Saha from the Tories is far, far more realistic about the limits of the internet and how Obama used it to direct people back to old media, and raise money for TV ads. Kerry McCarthy was as deluded and idealistic as ever and failed to even grasp that Labour HQ don't really care about Back the Ban or Ed's Pledge, but that these are mere email harvesting tools. Rory Cellen-Jones, the BBC's techno correspondant, seems to have his head in the right place. Julie Mayer was a walking cliche. TB wasn't exactly sure what Bruce Anderson was on about.

Good news is that Kerry has decided to drop the sexist misogynist line about Tory Bear. Well she didn't use it to his face at least, surely she would say anything she would put online to his face... right? TB certainly did...

Cartoon from

Lazy Hyena

UPDATE: 15.40: Will Heaven has a pretty

comprehensive round up of affairs

.

The Saint II

It was once the long arm of Lord Rennard that reached for Sarah Teather, but it could well soon be the long arm of the law. Another day, and another damning revelation from

Poltical Scrapbook

about everyone's favourite "Expenses Saint":

• Brent Liberal Democrats not only share a taxpayer-funded office with Sarah Teather but also a telephone system.
• Accounts submitted to the Electoral Commission show that Brent Liberal Democrats have paid absolutely nothing in telephone bills.
• For the last four years that claims are available, the full amount for each BT invoice has been claimed back in expenses by Sarah Teather, even though the phone number is also listed as the main contact telephone number for Brent Liberal Democrats.

Most damning for Teather is the fact then when put into a Left Foot Forward style excel masterpiece, the phone data shows clear increases in use during Liberal Democrat election campaigns. So just what is taxpayer payer money being used on? Teather's parliamentary office or election of yet more leeching Lib Dem councillors? As ever PS has the full story.

It's a must read.

 

Quote of the Decade

The mighty

Hannan

has struck blogging gold:

Suppose that every day, ten men went to the pub, and drank exactly £100 worth of ale among them. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, the breakdown would be roughly as follows:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7.
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank contentedly together in the saloon bar until the landlord, meaning to be helpful, presented them with a dilemma.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “you’re my best customers. To show you how much I appreciate your trade, I’d like to give you a discount. From now on, I’ll knock £20 of the total bill for your drinks”. Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80.
The group wanted to carry on splitting their bill in the way that we pay our taxes. So, obviously, the first four men, those least well off, would continue to enjoy free beer. What, though, of the other six? How could they divide the £20 discount in such a way that everyone got his fair share of the windfall?
They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, following the principle of the tax system they had been using. This is how the bill now looked.
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100 per cent saving).
The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33 per cent saving).
The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28 per cent saving).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25 per cent saving).
The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22 per cent saving).
The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16 per cent saving).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to enjoy free booze. But, as they left the pub, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a pound out of the £20 saving,” declared the sixth man. He jabbed an accusing finger at the tenth man,”Why should he get £10?”
“Too right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a pound too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”
“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get £10 back, when I got two measly quid? The system is rigged in favour of the toffs!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. It’s always the worst off who get neglected by the politicians!”
The nine men dragged the tenth into the carpark and gave him a thorough kicking.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beer without him.
But when the bill came, they found that their money didn’t even cover half of it.

Enough said.

A Busy Evening

Just realised TB is set to come face to face with Kerry McCarthy tonight. Will he survive?

He will try cover live the Delib/Messagespace debate "Technology, not policy, will win Election 2010". Looks like a good panel:

Rishi Saha (Head of New Media, Conservative Party)
Kerry McCarthy MP (New Media Campaign Spokesperson, Labour Party)
Rory Cellan-Jones (BBC)
Julie Meyer (BBC Dragon’s Den & Internet Entrepreneur)
Bruce Anderson (The Independent)

He will then try make it along to the Launch of Big Brother Watch to hear David Davis and Tony Benn. Looks like it's set to be a busy evening.

Someone bring a video camera incase Kerry lays the smack down?

Fallen Saint Teather

It is a truth universally acknowledged that while Lib Dems pretend to be saints, whiter than white and above board, they are in fact dirty cheating leeches on the political process. Whether it be their by-election smears, expenses fancy footwork, believe that Vince Cable is actually a force to be reckoned with, or just the constant pushing of the "we matter" idea to voters who should really know better, TB is sick to the teeth of them. One of the more pious and irritating Liberal Democrat MPs has to be Sarah Teather so it was with great pleasure that TB read of her extremely dodgy office rent situation over at his favourite guilty  pleasure-read lefty gossip-monger 

Political Scrapbook

. Hold on isn't Sarah Teather, the

expenses "saint"

? Surely not...

Could the expenses "saint" please explain why she has been subletting her constituency office to the local Lib Dem's to use a campaign centre, despite very clear rules against this. Despite the fact that she claims to have a joint tenancy and thus everything is ok, perhaps Ms. Teather could please explain why the local Lib Dems paid absoulutly no rent on the building for five years?! The smoking gun is

here

.

John Lyon, the Parliamentary Standards commissioner has already said he will investigate this matter. Great scoop for PS, bad news for Teather.

Another Word for the List

Funny how Kerry McCarthy throws her toys out of the pram and grumbles when negative campaigning is used against her, yet she is so willing to push exactly the same tactics - such as mydavidcameron.com and use her official position of authority, and following built up as Labour's New Media Campaign Spokesman to push traffic to fake social media accounts set up to

attack

Tory Chairman Eric Pickles and that amongst other things suggest the Conservative policy toward children would quote fuck little bastards forever. Hardly clean campaigning from the mighty Twitter Tsar is it?

Now some might suggest TB should get a sense of humour about these things, or at least come to expect them from an increasingly corner and desperate Labour online machine, and he does but he would also like to highlight Ms. McCarthy's rank hypocrisy.

Guess it will have to be added to the list, perhaps between incompetent and

homophobic

.

Abandon Ship

Apologies for the lack of posting recently, TB has been either a hungover or busy bear. Will attempt to rectify this next week, but frankly his time and writing energy is being spent elsewhere. He is tempted to say writing nothing is better than regurgitating a press release however CCHQ put out some interesting factoids this morning. Seems Gordon can't even garner the support of a full government. Since the swath of resignations last June, there have been twelve vacant Parliamentary Private Secretary places available. What was once the desirable first step up the ministerial ladder has been rejected by MPs refusing to serve and toe the government line. The following cabinet members do not have PPS and are thus lacking support to efficiently do their job:

Lord Drayson, Minister of State for Science and Innovation
Dawn Primarolo, Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families
Vernon Coaker, Minister of State for Schools and Learners
Rosie Winterton, Minister of State for Local Government & Regional Economic Development
Bob Ainsworth, Secretary of State for Defence
Phil Hope, Minister of State for Care Services
David Hanson, Minister of State for Policing, Crime and Security
Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development
Vera Baird, Solicitor General
Liam Byrne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Stephen Timms, Financial Secretary
Angela Eagle, Minister of State for Pensions and the Ageing Society

If the government can't even find members of its own party to support it, why should anyone else? Brown is so toxic these ferrets won't even taint themselves by serving at the lowest rung of his administration.

This government shouldn't be allowed to limp on until May, someone needs to take it round the back of the sheds with a shotgun right now.

Gordon's Slush Fund

Seems The Smith Institute wasn't Gordon's only slush fund. This could be very, very interesting. Peter Watt has more explosive details in the Mail on Sunday again this week. Iain Dale has the

details

.

Quote of the Day

"I see Paul Staines/Guido is offering a characteristically po-faced and overblown take on all this. Remarkable how someone who runs what claims to be a satirical blog can be so humourless. No wonder so many people are reading Tory Bear instead."

-Telegraph hack

James Kirkup

responding to

Guido's

 reaction to Parliament Spy disappearing.

Well Having Your Lawyer in the Cabinet Helps

There has been widespread condemnation today when it

emerged

that a senior member of nutjob group Hizb ut-Tahrir is teaching, and preaching at LSE. Reza Pankhurst has provoked outrage from the anti-extremism 

Student Rights

group who said today:

“With the increased scrutiny on campuses following Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab’s [Detroit bomber] terror attempt; we must call into question why a member of a group who have supported suicide bombings is allowed to teach to impressionable students.”

Quite.  The government apparently keeps Hizb ut-Tahrir “under continuous review” but having a your lawyer sitting in the Cabinet has clearly made life easier for Pankhurst. Despite his best efforts, Tooting MP and Transport Minister Sadiq Khan failed to stop Pankurst being imprisoned in Egypt for membership of the group back in 2002. Khan

described

the connection to the group as trivial.

Friends in high places eh?

TV's TB

TB did laugh when the makeup lady asked him if he wanted "airbrushing"

Ken Clarke for Twitter

Talking of last night's Question Time, tweeting tory boy

Declan Lyons

got an interesting campaign going. TB is agrees that life would be better with Ken Clarke on twitter. He came out with a vintage classic last night when describing the Labour coup "they hide behind the dagger and fight with the cloak."

More... more! We

know

 he has a Blackberry so why the delay? 

Support the campaign with the

#getkenontwitter

hashtag

Chilcot: The Guilty Men

Apologies for the lack of blogging - TB has been a busy bear. Meanwhile the pressure for Gordon to appear before Chilcot is growing. Not only did Clegg pound Brown on it at PMQs on Wednesday, but on last night's Question Time Peter Hain got utterly destroyed by an audience that smelt blood and cornered the Orange Crusader over the run up to the war. Hain fluffed the pre-rehearsed lines and the first twenty minutes of the show was real

car crash stuff

. A commenter wrote the other day:

The Chilcot inquiry thing is gaining ground - even on the Guardian website where they have a poll.. Well worth a look, to bump up the numbers to '90% of Guardian readers' wanting him to appear before the election? Sounds unlikely ? You think he could never be that stupid ? Wait until you see Tony Blair 'blamestorming' all over him and then see his temper rise and the need for revenge trumps the risks which such an encounter, and the accusation of flip-flopping, could cause.

Mark my words, he will be heading to the Queen Elizabeth the Second Conference Centre to sing like a canary before the election before getting himself up to his neck in the brown stuff..

TB is inclined to agree. The pressure needs to be increased. The public have the right to witness the thought process of the man that bankrolled the war before they cast their votes.

Say Cheese!

Dead Man Walking

Cam 6 Clegg 5 Brown 2

TB is very busy after it taking hours to get to the office this morning, but that PMQs couldn't pass without a quick comment. Dave was back to form. Splitting the questions was a good move - thumped Brown, leaving him spluttering and cornered with those last ones. The cabinet looked extremely uncomfortable while Dave pounded them again and again. The Downing Street staff lines about airbrushing and posters could have been funny the first time if it had been delivered well. However it flopped the first time and thus Brown looked absurd pounding it again and again. As ever Brown refused to answer any of the questions and resorted to his tired stale lines and statistics.

Clegg used his questions on Iraq well, it was a fair point that the country needs to have a chance to judge Brown for his writing the cheques for the war but the day was definitely Daves. Gordon is here to stay now and there is no risk of another coup. Time for the fun and games to really begin.

Popcorn anyone?

The Bagshaw Files

TB isn't one to blow his own whistle, but, he has enjoyed blowing the doors off Liberal Youth. He began his campaign against them during their election last March and became the must stop shop for all their campaign gossip. The Liberal Youth forums described the coverage as a "mixture of gonzo and News of the World sensationalism" that was "popcorn worthy" - TB couldn't have put it better. There was spin and briefing, lies and counter briefs - all recorded in painful detail by Tory Bear:.

It all began with a heckle, triggering a bitter election fight. Emails started landing in TB's inbox. The election dragged on, Liberal Youth imploded and the inevitable Downfall video appeared, which Cowley Street swiftly had pulled.



Election day drew nearer,

Guido weighed in

 and it was truly sandals at dawn. And suddenly it was all over. Bagshaw had gambled on  playing dirty to survive and she pulled it off. TB knew there was more fun to come.

It didn't take long for the honeymoon period to disappear. Elaine's opponent splashed her side of the story. And who will ever know what really happened at the training weekend? A message to those Lib Dems in despair:



And then she was gone. Stabbed in the back by those she had treated so badly, with the approval of the Party HQ.


So farewell Elaine.  Tory Bear will miss you.

Cowley Street Sanctioned Bagshaw Coup

TB's ears at Lib Dem HQ have confirmed that Baroness Ros Scott - the president of Liberal Democrats sanctioned the coup against the now former Liberal Youth Chairman. It is no surprise then that this one succeeded where so many failed before. Scott was approached by the plotters before the letter was put to Bagshaw and given the fact so many of the executive had already resigned it was simple to set up the two thirds no confidence constitutional passage out for Bagshaw. Elaine tried to fight it, but with the party machine against her she soon realised her time was up.

Loyal to the End

As the dust sort of settles on the Liberal Youth bunfight, two more yellows have jumped ship. James "Eva" Shaddock, loyal to the end to his lover and wee

James Harrison

 who TB is most glad to see the back of, both hung up their sandals this afternoon. These two were the only ones to stand by Elaine Bagshaw both privately and publicly, loyal dogs to the end.

James Shaddock's resignation letter about his caring friend is well worth a read if you fancy

a laugh

.

Puts Elaine's mention of a year of ups-and-downs into perspective.

The Bagshaw Coup

Well Lib Dems certainly know how to organise a coup. Maybe Elaine would have survived if she had stayed in the Labour Party. TB has been working the phones to find out what really happened. All this is on the record from a key figure in Liberal Youth:

"Elaine's explanation that she's resigning because she's 'no longer able to give this position the attention it deserves' is complete bullshit: it's the latest lie from a compulsive liar. Elaine was forced to resign because the Liberal Youth exec finally had the guts to stand up to her, and organised a coup. Seven committee members signed a letter of no confidence over the weekend giving her three days to resign immediately. She knew that her time was up, and we could do this the easy way, or the hard way."

It seems that her main reason for resigning was hilariously to attempt to salvage something of her reputation for her future political career. She sobbed to Cowley Street to try get the coup stamped out but they cut her loose.

"I mean, how can you overturn being no-confidenced by over half your own exec? What was she thinking? We won't be sorry to see the back of this bruiser and her bullying ways. Though now that she's got more time on her hands, Christ help us if she ever tries to stand for parliament. As a Lib Dem, anyway."

TB has been

warning

the Liberal Youthers about Bagshaw since March last year. Hate to say he told you so...