Moving on .... There have been quite a few Labour blogs that have called it a day over recent months for one reason or another. Even this blog has been feeling a little jaded recently. Don't get me wrong pointing out the errors of our opponents is always worthwile but being a pale 10th of recessmonkey or kerron isn't really worth the candle.

But i'm not chucking blogging in rather if you can't beat them do something more worthwhile. So this blog is moving over to wordpress and talking about policy alot more.

See you over there

http://parburypolitica.wordpress.com/

PS thanks to the people who put this blog 27th on Iain Dale's list. Those below will no doubt feel robbed and frankly i'm inclined to agree with them but there's always next year.

PPS Dodgy russians who make Jeffrey Archers branch of the tory party look positivly angelic and undertake legal action against bloggers can go to hell or state of non being as the some in the CoE now call it.  ¶ 10:15 am 3 comments

  Facebook Tories I'm half in a state on amazement at what people will put on facebook and allow the world to see. Take one Richard Coates, apparently the Gloucestershire County Council Conservative Political Researcher where he is, in his own words, "Paid to indulge my megalomania, I dream of ruling the county with a rod of iron from my frozen throne."  ¶ 2:45 pm 10 comments

  Voter intimidation, shameless lies and ruthless cynicism: Are the Fib Dems the new nasty party? As the new political season is gearing up Parburypolitica has been campaigning around the country. Last weekend it was back to my old stamping ground in Manchester and the weekend before to Stonebridge for a by election in the new Brent Central seat. Now the the Lib Dems could be used as a dictionary definition for random but I did notice some similarities in how they operate across the country.

Dogshit politics: Follow a dog around all day and wait until it does its daily doing, put your worst mattress on the street for as long as it takes to photo or even pretend to clear off graffiti then con the local populace into believing your doing something about it.

If in doubt lie, lie and lie again: If the first approach doesn't work blame the labour party and "forget" to mention to the voters that you have been running the council for the past year and half. In those canvassing door step conversations which aren't recorded you can say what you want. Labour candidates suddenly become nightmare neighbours, hospitals face sudden closure unless a lib dem is elected .... the list could go on and on. Oh and if they lose it wasn't because the voters thought they were rubbish its because they were called paedophiles by the victors but somehow forgot to mention it during the campaign. Fib Dem grapes are always sour.

If that doesn't work send in the heavies: In the battle of the poster wars they play really dirty. Got a garden on a main road with a tree and they will be your best friends. Put a non lib dem poster up in one of "their" areas they wont leave you alone until you take it down.

Recruit randoms: Like all dodgy cults the lib dems prey on the weak and gullible. They get asked to be members. Weak, gullible and now more of your neighbours than average, or even better a wife beating mercenary, then you can be the fib dem candidate / councillor / MP or in Ming's dreams PM.  ¶ 2:44 pm 2 comments

  Lib dems want to end the NHS ... no seriously.... Free at the point of use is the principle that is the bedrock of the NHS and the Lib Dems want to drive a coach and horses right through it. The lib dems seem to be in a spin at the moment. Personally I think it is rather unfair the Ming Campbell is written off because he is old when he really should be written off because he is useless and judging by what the they are saying in the Guardian politically venal. Bring on the campaign "Lib Dems want to destroy the NHS".  ¶ 10:17 am 0 comments

  What the commies really mean. From the CPGB website

After the defeats of the 20th century, we have seen a process of disintegration of proletarian politics. Genuine Marxists must engage in a process of recomposition. Above all, the left needs a rigorous approach to theory, an attempt to rearticulate communism as a viable alternative to a global capitalism in terminal decline. We call on all serious partisans of the working class to join us in this work

and it should really say

After billions of people thought we were authoritarian idiots, we have seen a process of them telling us to go sling our hook. Really crusty agenda dyslexics only have the works of Marx and Engels for company so must engage in a process of recomposting. Above all, the left needs to talk to itself as no on else is listening, an attempt to regurgitate communism that is bound to fail because everyone has gone shopping. We call on all serious screwballs, nutters, misfits and people who secretly fantasize about Stalin in the lumpen polytechnic to join us in this work  ¶ 6:09 pm 1 comments

  Rabitte no more The Irish Labour party leader Pat Rabbitte is standing down following the recent general election they had over there. At the moment there is only one candidate for his replacement Eamon Gilmore. Wonder where they got that idea from.  ¶ 6:23 am 1 comments

  Tory MP's refuse to back liability Boris In a startling revelation Tory MP's in London are split down the middle as only half were revealed as backers of Boris Johnson's mayoral campaign today. The overwhelming favourite to be selected as the Tories mayoral candidate is seen by many in the conservative parliamentary party as an embarrassing liability. This will come as a disappointment to his close friend and fellow Bullingdon club member David Cameron who had wanted a serious candidate like Greg Dyke but was prepared to settle for the old Etonian as it would create a greater perceived distance between his extremely rightwing friend and his modernising project.

London Tory MP's backing Boris 10
James Brokenshire
David Burrows
David Evennett
Justine Greening
Stephen Hammond
Greg Hands
Nick Hurd
Richard Ottoway
Andrew Rosindell
Lee Scott

London Tory MP's not backing Boris 9
Jacqui Lait
Bob Neill
Iain Duncam Smith
Mark Field
Andrew Pelling
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Derek Conway
John Horam
John Randall  ¶ 4:03 pm 2 comments

  Tory makes a fat arse of himself There are two ways you can do politics. One way is to engage in serious work to benefit your constituents the other is to grandstand in the media and make a tit of yourself in the hope that you can lick the sole of Boris de Pfiffel Johnson's boots.

Sadly Brian Coleman a Tory member of the London Assembly has taken it upon himself to follow the second aforementioned path. Not happy to out Ted Heath with no evidence whatsoever after the guy had died and was unable to sue, he has decided to attack Blue Peter presenter, the delectable Konnie Huq.

Having met Konnie I can say she is about as political as your average heat magazine reader. Her sister Rupa is the politico in the family and she didn't even know that she was going to meet Ken. But none the less, according to more febrile rightwingers standing next to Ken Livingstone at a launch for a cycling event imperils the political impartiality of the BBC. No doubt the next thing Coleman is going to come up with is that standing next to gay people will make you gay. Frankly standing next to Brian Coleman would put me off the idea but that's by the by. Apparently Coleman is gay but unlike most gay guys he is a total ^*%&(* *&$%

Coleman says the mayor made a political rant. The is fatuous nonsense. No such rant ever took place. So unless he wants to produce a transcript, which I can't see him doing as it would blow his " case" out of the water he should apologies forthwith to both Konnie Huq and Ken Livingstone. It really irritates me that good people from all parties involved in politics have to put up with such shallow, rentaquote media whores who sole electoral purpose is to increase their squild notoriety amongst a bemused electorate while lining their pockets with taxpayers cash.

The real question that should be asked is not over Konnie Huq's political impartiality which is impeccable but rather why the taxpayer has to subsidize Brian Coleman's fat ass's taxi fares to the tune of £10,000 per year.

Perhaps if he followed Konnie's sensible advice and got on a bike the taxpayer could breath a large sigh of relief at the lifting of this onerous burden and so would his chairs.  ¶ 2:09 pm 6 comments

  When in a hole it's best to stop digging

Sense from Bloggerheads  ¶ 10:22 am 0 comments

  I'd vote for Neil Kinnock over Iain Dale anyday I know it's the silly season and news is thin on the ground but Iain must be having the slowest newsday of the year if he is rehashing this utter codswallop. Neil Kinnock was a fundamentally decent man who tried to drag his party towards electability but narrowly and sadly failed.

Now it is the incompetent, malicious, divisive, economically illiterate and just plain mean Thatcher and Major governments that helped deliver the splendid victories of 97, 01, and o5 but I can't help thinking it would have been a lot better for the country if Kinnock had won in 87 or 92.

Just in case you thought that the Tories would be an different if they got into government again I refer you to this invitation to join "Dave" Shameron at the races which includes directions for your private jet or helicopter! Forget his cheesy photo ops, if "Dave" ever gets the keys to Number 10 in the words of Neil Kinnock "I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old."  ¶ 10:13 am 3 comments

  Tis the season to be merry Now we don't grow our own food any more like some medieval serf and get it all nicely wrapped from the supermarket we've kind of lost touch with the seasons of food production. If we hadn't had an allotment when we were growing up I'm sure that I would know even less than my admittedly limited knowledge of what's actually in season. One of the great things about the net is that you can find the answer to practically anything so I was rather pleased to stumble across this which has loads of good information.  ¶ 10:01 am 0 comments

  Who kills more people: Osama Bin Laden or the motor car? It appears that Mr Al Qaeda is in fact something of a wannabe when it comes to killing people compared with the motor car. Around 3000 people died in 9/11 but more than 3000 people every single year die on Britain's roads. Never mind the War on Terror what about the War on Cars?

Lets face it it would be cheaper than invading lots of foreign countries and could save more British lives. The only problem is that is not such a good news story as terrorism. War correspondents would rather get shelled and bombed in far off lands than report on the slaughter on our own streets.

Still we aren't all going to get killed by the motor cars, some of us will succumb
to heart disease so perhaps it's grim reading for the car industry that the latest research is showing that exhaust fumes are driving, excuse the pun, up rates of heart disease.  ¶ 11:24 am 4 comments

  Randomised controlled trials for social policy Seems like a good idea to me.  ¶ 8:33 pm 1 comments

  Nick Parrott's Fact of the Day Thought I would share this from my facebook wall. Hat tip Nick.

Ealing Southall was the lowest swing against an incumbent party in any by-election since 1982. The 1982 by-election was in Beaconsfield, where the Labour candidate was Tony Blair. Funny old game...  ¶ 7:04 pm 1 comments

  What a difference a day makes .... Two third places in Sedgefield and Ealing Southall and the tory boys over at ConHome are less than happy. Could Cameron be the next Conservative catastrophe? Yes according to these comments from Tory activists.


"Slam dunk for Labour tomorrow then!"

"sadly we offer nothing more than a fresh face."

"Cameron's going to take a massive slap in the cherubic chops over Ealing Southall. Cameron visited the place FIVE times and there was talk of winning it. Lit even ran as 'David Cameron's Conservatives', so it's personal!Not good at all."

"Well "call me Dave" can't blame the "nasty wing" this time. It was their choice of candidate, their style of campaign, their staffers on the ground and even "David Cameron's Conservatives" on the ballot paper. Time to start producing results "Dave" or we might want our Party back."

"I'm afraid this can't be spun any other way than a bad night for us."

"we can be justified in saying "Cameron out". IDS lost his position after Brent East and this is, in effect, far worse."

"The Cameron leadership is a shambles. Shame on us for putting up with it for 2 years."

"it is shockingly bad to be honest."

"I voted Tory the past 4 GE's and I CANNOT STAND Cameron. Many many of my Tory friends are the same. He is a puke-making spinmaster and the country is sick of it."

"Cameron needs to go. Brown will go to the polls this fall and will return a comfortable majority."  ¶ 7:07 am 2 comments

  Cycling friendly cities Here is a great video from Holland on cycling friendly cities with transport polices that put people first and benefit the environment. Perhaps they should get the Brits to do their videos for them but the Dutch do wonderful city planning and the UK would benefit hugely from borrowing their ideas.

  ¶ 5:55 pm 0 comments

  Police investigate Tories over Ealing Southall The sheer incompetence of the Conservative party is breath taking. They pick a candidate who isn't even a member, who has donated thousands to Labour and is not even one of the tens of thousands of people who have exactly the same amount of political experience as him (i.e. none) and actually live in the constituency.

Now they can't even run a by election campaign without getting investigated by the police  ¶ 2:04 am 1 comments

  Tory Blogger admits defeat Good to see that Iain Dale doesn't think that the Tories stand a chance in Ealing Southall. Hopefully more important people like the electors of the seat are of the same opinion. No doubt we shall find out on Thursday.  ¶ 11:28 am 9 comments

  I'm off to Ealing Southall for the weekend. While i'm gone don't play follow play follow the former lib dem leader like they do over at the CP's. It's dangerous kids.  ¶ 6:07 pm 1 comments

  Sport, dosh and governance A fascinating article in the Times.  ¶ 2:35 pm 1 comments

  Ealing Southall candidates: the dirty dozen

1. Nigel Bakhai, Liberal Democrat
2. John Sydney Cartwright, The Official Monster Raving Loony Party
3. Sati Chaggar, English Democrats - 'Putting England First!'
4. Salvinder Singh Dhillon, Respect - Peace, Justice, Equality
5. Sarah Janet Edwards, Green Party
6. Kuldeep Singh Grewal, Independent
7. Tony Lit, David Cameron's Conservatives
8. Yakub Masih, Christian Party 'Proclaiming Christ's Lordship'
9. Jasdev Singh Rai, Independent
10. KT Rajan, UK Independence Party
11. Virendra Kumar Sharma, The Labour Party Candidate
12. Gulbash Singh, Independent

Here's the full list of Ealing Southall by election candidates. By elections are never the cleanest of campaigns so in a Telly Savalas moment it seems appropriate to call the candidates the dirty dozen, it also helps there being twelve. Anyway, then it struck me Virendra Sharma - Telly Savalas separated at birth?  ¶ 2:35 pm 3 comments

  World's biggest Dick (Cheney) nailed ...

in a funnier way than they tend to do in his secret prisons.Dick Cheney would make a great Bond villain. Filming could also keep him occupied for the few weeks between when he steps down as vice president and when all the people who have been kidnapped and tortured on his orders start to sue his ass off. The video apparently expires on the 26th July so catch it while you can.  ¶ 9:30 am 0 comments

  Britains railways are safest ever One of the great things about blogs is that you can highlight stuff that the mainstream media decide to leave out of its coverage. My dad is a little bit of a train buff and takes The Railway magazine. Normally I leave it well alone but I had a look at the latest issue and it turns out that for the first time ever there have been two consecutive years 2005, 2006 with no passenger deaths on the railways. There have been 6 years in postwar Britain where there have been no deaths on board trains and half of them have been in the 21st century the other was in 2003.

So this is something of a golden age of rail safety. Lets compare to other forms of transportation. Train travel is 23 times safer than car travel and 849 times safer than motorcycles. As you can see from national statistics road deaths have been reducing over the last 40 years but roads are still the killing fields of modern Britain with thousands dead every year. Can someone please explain to me why people are so attached to their expensive, polluting and slow cars ....  ¶ 8:45 am 2 comments

  Dutch bikes

This is an excellent video about Dutch bike culture. It's filmed from an American perspective but that doesn't mean that we don't have to learn exactly the same lessons because we suffer the same problems. The Dutch and also the Danes lead the way on creating healthy, happy and green societies so if your interested in improving your own society take a peek.  ¶ 8:15 pm 0 comments

  Tony Lit: a tory dream turns to a nightmare... First a little local difficulty cropped up today but nothing to worry about long term. Clearly they thought after not getting their man selected that he was so weak he had no hope as an independent candidate so they buggered off in a huff to the Tories and I suspect never to be heard from again. Pickled politics is even counting it as a rather big blessing and i'm looking forward to the Tories repeating their recent calls for immediate by elections. We could even combine the parliamentary and locals.

The defection of a bunch of non-entities shouldn't overshadow the extremely dubious choice of Tony Lit as a "Cameron Conservative" by election candidate. Considering that the last Asian "Dave" promoted to the shadow cabinet turned out to be homophobe and terrorist sympathiser you would of thought "Dave" would have the gumption to select someone as a candidate who's ink on the membership forms was dry.But no, not our "Dave".

As Kevin Maguire points out the guy drives a roller and is a former model. His dad is also worth a cool £75,000,000. No doubt "Dave" would have thought he was the right kind of chap if his dad has that much money. I disagree however. The Tories should not be selecting candidates based on the colour of their skin or indeed the size of former independent candidate daddies wallet but on the content of their character. Tony Lit is the blankest canvass since the great paint shortage of 1645. If they could get a mannequin to talk they would have put it on the ballot paper as possibly the only candidate that could be more vacuous. This is dangerous for the Tories. What kind of man are they trying to put in parliament? Who knows he only met them a week ago.

No doubt he has the nice house outside the constituency and the flash car and fancies strutting his stuff in the only palace (of Westminster) that you can be a part of without having carnal knowledge of someone in the royal family but a seat in parliament is really not about another trophy it's about public service.

In the unlikely event that Tory Lit is returned as the member for Ealing Southall he'd have a shock after the first surgery when he finds out they expect him to do it more than once.

Even a local Tory blogger is calling Lit a "high risk" so if and when it all blows up in "Dave's" face it's his appalling judgement which is at fault and no one else's.  ¶ 12:40 pm 2 comments

  Charlie Kennedy nabbed by the boys in blue The Guardian is reporting that the former Lib dem leader has been spoken to about smoking on a train. Never mind the sheer inconsiderateness towards other passengers, we all know that most of the problems that the British Transport Police have to deal with regarding anti social behaviour come down to alcohol an area in which Kennedy is an acknowledged expert. So Parburypolitica asks just how sober was he?  ¶ 4:50 pm 0 comments

  Letter to Gordon Dear Gordon,... The Gruniad has done a good PDF of the your new government but I would add an amendment to it.

We need a Minster of State for Active Travel and Fitness, it could be a joint appointment between the Department of Health and the Department of Transport in the same way that the Minister of State for Trade is between the Foreign Office and B.E.R.R.

Active Travel is shorthand for cycling and walking but basically covers anything that gets us out of motorcars and benefits our health and the environment. The job would basically be providing more and better opportunities for cycling and walking, promoting healthy lifestyles and tackling the car culture through urban design.

This is a job that would solve problems with both departments. At the moment the DOT is set up in a very anti green way and this needs to change. At the moment you have a Secretary of State, two Ministers of State one for roads and road safety and the other for aviation and shipping and a parliamentary undersecretary for railways.

I would change it like this. Split the aviation and shipping brief and give aviation to roads and shipping to railways this would create a vacancy in the DOT which could be filled with a Minster of State for Active Travel and Fitness. This would be also good for the Department of Health.

At the moment the NHS is a national illness service ie when we have something wrong with us it tries to fix it. The best way to improve our health though would be a change in lifestyle so this appointment would help rebalance the Department of Health from being to closely aligned with producer and indeed supplier interests to a situation where it takes into account the nationals wellness as well as illness.

We have an appalling car culture in this country, major lifestyle challenges that put the NHS at long term risk and an environment record that needs improvement. The vexing thing is that we know how to solve these challenges but what is needed is iron political will to see them through.  ¶ 2:00 pm 0 comments

  I want on of those! Here is an interesting quote from an interesting article in the Independent

Almost 200 years after their invention in northern England, railways (if they are well run) are still the pleasantest and safest way to travel. In 27 years, the French Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV) system has carried more than a billion passengers. There has not been one serious injury.

We may have been the first but we haven't been the best for decades. So Tom now you have ditched the blog you have plenty of time left for effecting a national high speed rail network. Crack on.  ¶ 9:50 am 0 comments

  Brothers in arms and oil and big wads of cash
This picture amused me. Hat tip Harry's Place  ¶ 9:38 am 0 comments

  Ealing Southall - The NEC really does know best! This may not be the conventional view at the moment but it is non the less right. Knowing why the NEC did what they did I can see the wisdom of their decision and while it may be a painful decision for some to accept at the moment it really is in the wannabe candidates long term best interests even if it may not feel like that this morning.

As this blog is a public forum there is a limit to what I can say on here. If you want to know why Jasbir Anand was not put on the shortlist go for a google though I cannot vouch for the truth of what you may find there . As for Sonika it was not the right time or place for her though above all her character remains unblemished by this minor set back and i'm sure that we will see her in the House of Commons in short order, just not in Ealing Southall.  ¶ 10:22 am 13 comments