With Watts up with that giving us a big plug, hits are soaring (thank you) and the country proportions are heavily tilted towards the USA. UK hits recently were down to 14 percent of the total.
That makes us truly an international blog, which we have been for some time anyway. UK hits rarely exceed 40 percent. Unsurprisingly, we are picking up a few hits from India these days, although the current interest from Zimbabwe is a little puzzling. Is this good or bad?
A leader in The Australian today suggests how the debate in beginning to be shaped by the revelations on the generous Dr Pachauri, who gives all his pocket money to his own institute – without then declaring how much he gets in return.
Says the leader:
Essentially, the conference's failure to update the Kyoto Protocol leaves developing nations to do as they like. But as the long list of business interests of Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and head of India's Energy and Resources Institute, suggests, the politics of carbon are replete with vested interests.
How Dr Pachauri can remain impartial given his reported interests in fossil fuel, venture capital, alternative energy, research and motor vehicle companies is an interesting question that he is yet to answer satisfactorily.
That is indeed the question, but it was one raised exclusively on this blog a mere eight days ago and developed in subsequent posts. But it took the power of "Big Media" to project the story and give it that all-important "reach" that a small blog cannot achieve – significantly helped of course by James Delingpole and his MSM blog and influential independents such as Bishop Hill.
A point that emerges from that experience is that the MSM and the blogs are not in competition – there is a synergy between them. They can feed off each other and achieve things which alone they could not, as the message of each is spread through the net. This is a lesson some newspaper editors and proprietors – with their dog-in-the-manger attitude to links – could do well to take on board.
But the main lesson to emerge is of the power of the internet as an information tool. Here, from a tiny room in deepest West Yorkshire, without ever leaving the desk, one can reach out through the portal of the computer and conduct a world-wide search, ranging – as this one has done – from Copenhagen, New York and Washington, to India, China, Japan and all points between.
Used effectively, this gives the "citizen" unimaginable power. Searches that would have taken weeks and months, requiring resources beyond the scope of the individual, are now within the reach of anyone equipped with the internet and a laptop costing no more than a few hundred pounds, working out of a back room in a normal home – and they can be done in hours and days.
Business, government and even (or especially) social discourse now relies on the internet but, in so doing, they leave footprints which are difficult to hide. And, if they are there to find, we will find them. In a world dominated by vested interests and crooks like Pachauri, the internet is a tool for freedom.
Following the Channel 4 News lead on the Gray report yesterday, the BBC has allowed procurement minister Quentin Davies (pictured) to deny that the report has been suppressed
Despite this "non-suppression" though, more details are emerging, not least via the unlikely medium of a BBC clog which has obtained a slide presentation of the Gray report. Among other things, the slides charge that the "Ministry of Defence does not really know the price of any kit, and project management does not exist in the Department."
With the procurement minister in full flow, this has elicited a halfway sensible comment from the Coffee House clog (which proves it is possible) to the effect that: "the slides point to long-term structural problems within the MoD, which will take an enormous effort for a future Tory government to reverse."
Suddenly, therefore, defence procurement is on the map, with the leader in The Daily Telegraph airing its views on the "procurement scandal", noting that: "The problems at the MoD still run very deep indeed." The Times also takes a robust view, declaring:
The problem is that the military chiefs want everything they see in the sweet shop and the officials and politicians can't say no. When they run out of money, as they always do, orders are merely postponed, which raises costs and stores up more problems.
That is indeed one of the problems, but only one. Readers of DOTR will be aware of many, many more, none of which are referred to in any of the current media commentary. Having "discovered" procurement for themselves, they have no need for mere blogs.
However, at least the media are dimly aware that there are systemic problems. Maybe, just maybe, they can stay the course and more Tory MPs might start asking the right questions. And maybe pigs will start flying as well, but what we have is a start.
The triumphalism and euphoria of the (not the) Conservative Party over the Norwich North by-election is only to be expected of a tribal system where winning is all. However, since the winner took only 18 percent of the popular vote, this is not so much a victory as a sign of a political system in crisis.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, we see an uneasy Charles Moore, who seems to be more than usually on form of late. He writes:
And I am sure that the Conservatives' focus groups tell them that, beyond thinking well of Mr Cameron, voters do not recognise the Tory "signature" on anything much. In 1978/9, they would have known that the Tories promised something different on taxes, inflation, trade unions, and the Cold War. What do they know now? Nothing terrible, but also, nothing much.
The vagueness of these impressions might not matter politically if in fact the Tories did know what they wanted to do. But where are they on terror, "human rights", our constitutional decay, health service reform, local government, energy, our relations with America, the undeclared war in Afghanistan?
This blog has rather gone overboard on the Afghan issue, but it is one which has considerable political traction and has a totemic significance far beyond the narrow geographical confines of the conflict – from which many broader lessons can be drawn.
Yet, apart from – some might say – a cynical exercise to exploit the very narrow issue of helicopter shortages, we have seen little input from the Conservative Party in general, reflected in a remarkable paucity of debate on the Tory-supporting blogs.
From the flagship Tory blog, for instance, we have had but one clumsy intervention and little more. By contrast, debate on the Labourlist site has been far more active, albeit on the forum rather than on the main blog.
Something of this must surely stem from the tendency of contemporary politicians to steer the debate in directions they want it to go, rather than address the issues that concern real people in the real world. But the lack of political discourse on a subject that has dominated the headlines for the best part of three weeks can do nothing but reinforce the sense of disconnect between the political classes and their claques and ordinary people.
The evasion of reality, of course, stretches far beyond Afghanistan, not least into the pressing issue of the economy where it is growing evident that there are extremely tough times ahead. And, with tough times come tough choices, which will require bold political leaders with a strong mandate from the country.
Whatever the victory at Norwich North was, it was not an expression of support of and confidence in the Conservative Party. Eighteen percent does not a mandate make. And, if that is in any way replicated at the general election, we face the prospect of a government lacking the moral authority to make the tough choices that will be needed – assuming even that there is the basic competence which will enable the right choices to be identified.
The immediate repercussions are difficult to predict, but while our protests lack the élan of the Gallic street riots, the things we do well in this country are sullen resentment and mulish stubbornness. Against that, even the brutish violence of our increasingly militaristic and insolent police force will find it hard to prevail.
Mr Cameron may, therefore, be cherishing his victory this weekend, but one can't help but feel that the mule is eyeing him up for a mighty kick.
In this topsy-turvey world, there seems to be another of those dividing lines emerging – those who are interested (and concerned) about the increasingly lethal campaign in Afghanistan and those who are determinedly ignoring it.
On the one side, for a change, is the British media, which has devoted an unprecedented amount of space and time to the campaign, with the tardy intervention of the Clegg, who at least has political antennae sensitive enough to realise that it is an issue which has some considerable public resonance.
Apart then from the occasional, formulaic intervention of Liam Fox, who has yet to decide whether he has anything useful to say, the running is being made by the government, with Ainsworth's keynote speech to Chatham House yesterday, and by an increasing number of military and ex-military commentators, as well as specialist journalists.
On the other hand, as far as the opposition goes, this seems to be a politics-free zone, and especially as far as the British political blogosphere is concerned. Although US and Canadian blogs are full of comment, one struggles to find anything but the occasional reference on the British side of the pond. It is odd that the MSM, so derided by the blogs, is making the running, while the blogosphere is opting out.
Clearly, though – from our readers' comments on the forum, and the hit-rate, there is significant interest. My publisher also tells me that Ministry of Defeat is "moving" after a slow start, further suggesting that there is real public concern over what has been a neglected issue.
We thus remain committed to running with the debate, although it is slightly unbalancing the blog, for which I apologise. This also means that other subjects are not getting the coverage they deserve, but we'll try and pick up on some of the news in the occasional round-up piece.
As the current torrent of coverage dies down, as and when, normal service – if there is such a thing on this blog – will be resumed.
I first heard that there had been another IED strike on a Viking early Wednesday evening, long before there was any media coverage. This was from Thomas Harding of The Daily Telegraph, who told me two soldiers had been killed, and more injured.
At that time, we did not know that Lt-Col Rupert Thorneloe had been killed. Thus, to us, there was only one story – another example of men being killed in the perilously inadequate Viking, so lightly armoured that it is incapable of resisting even a minor IED hit under the belly or tracks.
As the details of Thorneloe's death came in the following morning, to us the tenor of the story did not change. In fact, it reinforced the line and made it both more tragic and more outrageous. Although every death counts, there is still something special about a senior officer – and a very highly regarded one at that – being killed. The utter, devastating waste of life, arising from this useless vehicle, was very much in our minds.
Harding's story reflected that outrage. On the other hand, Newton Dunn who went out early breaking the embargo to claim an "exclusive" for The Sun, focuses on the claimed "massive hidden bomb" rather than the vulnerability of the Viking.
Michael Evans, who has previously written about the Viking, followed up with a piece in The Times. He thus wrote of "the rising number of deaths among soldiers travelling in Vikings, which are driven by the Royal Marine Armoured Support Group" and of the "growing concern to the troops in Helmand."
From there, however, it went downhill. The story was then covered by The Daily Mail which focused mainly on the fact that Thorneloe was the highest ranking casualty since the Falklands.
Initially, The Guardian pasted in a Press Association release, which made no mention of the Viking. On its own though, the Press Association offers another piece, with the headline, "Commanding officer shot in Helmand". This is picked up, uncritically by hundreds of local papers throughout the land, not a brain cell between them as they paste it into their websites.
Needless to say, the vehicle was only briefly mentioned by the BBC, without comment. Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent of The Independent also fails to pick up the thread.
Then The Guardian followed up with a piece by Richard Norton-Taylor. He, like Newton Dunn, retailed a description of a "huge bomb" that shattered the armoured Viking tracked vehicle. This time though, that detail came from a "defence official", reflecting the MoD's determination to "talk up" the size of the IED in order to divert attention from the weakness of the Viking. Even in death, politics plays its part.
Here, The Daily Express excels itself. Col Thorneloe, it tells us, was travelling in a tracked Viking armoured vehicle when it was hit by a blast from an IED. Then, trotting out pure, undiluted MoD-ese, it tells us, "The Vikings have been given extra armour but nothing can guarantee protection if a bomb is big enough."
With the news out, the MoD posted some details of the incident itself.
We are told that the two soldiers were killed by an explosion whilst on convoy along the Shamalan Canal, near Lashkar Gah. Travelling in a Viking, Lt Col Thorneloe had left the Battle Group Headquarters on a resupply convoy so that he could visit his men. At 1520hrs local time an IED was detonated under this vehicle. Lt Col Thorneloe and Tpr Hammond were killed by the blast.
The rest of the lengthy post is taken up with eulogies, the text forming the bulk of the copy used by the media, drowning the limited operational detail.
The Times follows this line. Despite Michael Evans offering critical detail of the Viking, his newspaper offers a "commentary" by Crispin Black discussing how "Rupert Thorneloe's death will affect Welsh Guardsmen deeply", with not a word about the manner of his untimely death.
In a second piece, Tom Coghlan offered his reflections of Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the man, and then another piece where he described an earlier ambush on a Viking supply convoy, completely missing the point. How the MoD must love him. We will review this piece separately.
James Blitz of the Financial Times came in with his own piece. By now, the MoD was briefing freely and the focus again was entirely on the "commanding officer" aspect of the death. The MoD was cited as saying that only six Army COs have died on operations in command of their units since 1948.
There was no reference at all to the Viking. This, and its extreme vulnerability to IEDs, was gradually being filtered out of the narrative as the "damage limitation" mechanisms went to work.
Reuters had its staff reporter Peter Griffiths write up the story. He also failed to include details of the Viking. This report will be reproduced in thousands of MSM reports.
So it was that, progressively, an "inconvenient truth" was buried. The Viking has been written out of the script, and with it the dire role of the MoD in providing completely inadequate equipment. Unable to see beyond the narrow confines of a story and lacking the imagination and skills to report the real story, the media pack has sold the pass. Of the blogs though, at least A Tangled Web got the point.
But when men (and women) continue to die, who will share the blame? Not the media, of course. They just report the news.
One of the explanations for the unseemly rush to get the Waxman-Markey Bill through Congress is that the warmists are on the back foot. The global warming tide is shifting against them and, before too long, their creed will be consigned to the dustbin of history as yet another of those mad obsessions that periodically grip the masses.
This is certainly the view of the Wall Street Journal which notes with approval how the Australian Senate is giving Kevin Rudd's version of a climate change law a very hard time. Furthermore, it observes, Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public scepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.
The response of the warmists, however, is nothing if not predictable. Having controlled the agenda for so long, their reaction to the changing tide is to rig the debate, closing down on dissenting voices and suppressing alternative views.
One element of this strategy is recorded by Booker in today's column, where he describes the concerted efforts of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) to prevent one of the world's leading experts on polar bears attending a meeting because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.
The group is meeting in Copenhagen under the aegis of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission, set up – as Booker puts it- "to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming," one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December.
The excluded expert is Dr Mitchell Taylor who has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. His problem is that, more than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.
To add to his litany of sins, while Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years, he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.
Thus Dr Taylor has been told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – are "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".
This is but one example of how the warmists control the agenda, another being offered by Watts up with that, which catalogues measures taken by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suppress dissident voices within its own organisation.
None of this could happen, of course, without the active participation of the media and, in his second piece, Booker refers to Lord Hunt, who last week "made one of the most absurd claims that can ever have been uttered by a British minister."
Solemnly reported by the media, Booker writes, he said that by 2020 he hopes to see thousands more wind turbines round Britain's coasts, capable of producing "25 gigawatts (GW)" of electricity, enough to meet "more than a quarter of the UK's electricity needs".
Hunt's ideas are so patently absurd that, had a minister announced that the UK was about to launch a series of manned space shots to the moon to mine green cheese in order to solve the global protein shortage, there would be little to compare between the two.
Booker notes though that perhaps the most disturbing point is that the media dutifully reported Lord Hunt's absurd claims without asking any of the elementary questions that could have revealed that he was talking utter nonsense. One cannot of course expect Opposition MPs to take an intelligent interest in such matters, he writes, but if journalists allow ministers to get away with talking such tosh, the slide into unreality can only continue.
This is a broader point that deserves more attention, touching on an effect we see in defence and elsewhere. The media – as a collective – has its own narratives and as long as an utterance fits with those narratives, it is given an airing. That which goes against the grain is buried.
Currently, the media narrative on climate change is that global warming is real and represents a major threat to the planet and humankind. Similarly, all the woes in the military stem from "under-resourcing" and all problems in Afghanistan will be solved by more "boots on the ground". Thus is the debate rigged, through which means our decline into obscurity, poverty and impotence is managed.
Climate change minister Stewart Stevenson (pictured) said: "Scotland can be proud of this bill, the most ambitious and comprehensive piece of climate change legislation anywhere in the world."
"As a country, we are leading global action and expect others to follow our lead as we look to the international summit in Copenhagen this December."
It may only be Scotland but it is still completely mad. The trouble is, our own lot are not much better, if at all. And, in any case, we have Brussels to contend with as well.
To a very great extent, the obsession of diverse legislatures with global warming is a symptom of the greater malaise, illustrating the great divide between the people and our rulers. Time and again, across both sides of the Atlantic, opinion polls indicate that ordinary people do not rate climate change as an important issue.
The real science, as opposed to the tripe promulgated by the scientific rent seekers, does not support the thesis of human-induced warming, or even that CO2 is a driver. And, for the past seven years, the "global temperature" – if there is such a thing – has been declining.
Yet still, the politicians plough on regardless, oblivious to reality, totally locked in their own self-referential bubble, spewing out the mindless instruments of the sort we see in Scotland.
And the worst of those is that among the measures voted through parliament were powers to fine householders and companies if they do not take action to improve the energy efficiency of their houses and buildings. Next thing you know, they will be fining people for putting things in the wrong dustbins ... er ...
More and more, I am convinced that "we" are going to have to shoot them. Of course, "we" are not going to do that. We are going to moan, bitch ... and write blogs. But if politicians continue on this path, that is the inevitable outcome – perhaps not for decades or even generations. The rate it is going though, it will be sooner rather than later.
As we watch the tragedy of Iran play itself out, it looks such a long way away, but we are not that far from it - it only took a couple of generations to turn that country from a wealthy, advanced, western-orientated nation to the basket case it now is. Civilisation is never more than skin deep - mess with it and it will mess with you.
"The British National Party achieved its most significant electoral breakthrough last night when it won two seats in the European Parliament."
That is the view of the august London Times - a value judgement rather than a straight reporting of fact. What, after all, does "significant" mean?
If the experience of UKIP in 1999 is any guide, when it managed to get three MEPs elected, last night's events mean not very much at all. The combined forces of the establishment, including the political classes and the media managed to encapsulate UKIP, declining to report its activities and driving it into near obscurity.
Certainly, not reporting issues is something at which the British media excels and, after what will be a brief flurry of recriminations, that bit of the establishment will settle down to do what it does so well. Very quickly, Nick Griffin will find that being elected to a remote, irrelevant institution provides very little in the way of a platform. As before, every attempt will be made to ignore him.
What will make the difference is whether he and his Yorkshire colleague Andrew Brons can avoid the internal party bickering that came with UKIP's success, and build a firm foundation for further electoral success. But for the fluke of Kilroy's intervention in 2004, and the amazing fluke of the MPs' expenses issue breaking when it did, UKIP would be on its way down and out.
Internally, BNP is as big a mess as was UKIP. It is going to be struggling to rise above its own internal party rivalries and jealousies and, in a sense, yesterday's success will be a challenge for it. It will either make or break the party.
Here, its strongest asset is the visceral hatred exhibited by the establishment which fails to understand that BNP's attraction to those who increasingly feel disenfranchised is precisely that it is hated by the establishment. Griffin has been clever enough to understand that and, the more vitriol that is directed at his party, the easier he will find it to attract voters.
The response, of course, should be to take on the BNP full frontal. Its prejudices are obvious, its politics are loathsome and its policies are incoherent. Against an open, intelligent, coherent challenge, it would not last five minutes.
Where the traditional parties have their difficulties though are that they too are unable to offer coherent policies. Not least, they are constantly having to hide or deny that "elephant in the room", the European Union – which has given the BNP its opening. And, as long as the major parties attempt to build their own electoral base on a foundation of deception and lies, their support will always be fragile and prone to peeling off by the "extremists".
It is, therefore, all very well for ConHome to complain – as it is doing – that Labour opened the way for BNP's victory. In another time, some of those voters who broke away to vote for BNP should rightly – as they did with Thatcher's time – have voted Conservative. That they did not is as much a reflection of the Tories as it is Labour.
And neither is there any mileage to be gained from killing the messenger. We would like to think that we picked up the vibes earlier than many and were writing freely on what is, after all, a political phenomenon.
That we write about the BNP does not imply or in any way convey our support for that party, any more than the MSM and the blogs who are today writing about the same subject. We just got in earlier, before the event, warning about something we felt might happen and now has.
Nor, despite establishment attempts to encapsulate the boil, can it be assumed that BNP can be safely contained. The reason why so many people felt it "safe" to vote for BNP as a protest was because, ultimately, the EU parliament does not matter. Conventional wisdom has it that they will come into the fold for the general election.
However, increasingly, people are beginning to realise that the Westminster parliament doesn't matter either. As long as we are ruled by the malign nexus of Brussels, international and largely obscure organisations and the growing ranks of the quangos (one of which is to take control of parliament), that realisation will grow. With it will lift any restraint on voting for such parties as BNP.
What will be the measure of success however, will not be the noise but the silence. The silence of the politicos about BNP is testament to how scared they are running, we wrote earlier. A healthy political system could take on the BNP with ease and defeat it. If the political parties maintain their silence, Griffin can only prosper. In that silence, you will hear him laughing.
It is an interesting reflection of the current political crisis that much of the reporting is couched in bellicose terms, borrowing freely from the military vocabulary. Thus, resort is being made to a "war", to "battles", "attacks", "campaigns", "coups" and other such terms, including reference to a "wounded" prime minister.
When it comes to the real war out in Afghanistan, however, the political classes are strangely silent, showing as Booker reports in his column today, almost complete indifference to the plight of our armed forces in that increasingly perilous theatre.
This picks up on our observation on Thursday, when at one point in the debate only ten MPs were in attendance.
Amongst others who pointed out the desperate indifference to the issue was Liam Fox, who had this to say about the timing of the debate:
It says everything about the priorities of the current Government and their business managers that the annual debate on defence in the world is squeezed by a topical debate, on a day when they knew that most MPs would be away from the House. I can just hear the Government business managers asking, "What subject is so unimportant that we can stick it in the Commons on polling day for the European and local elections?" and the answer coming back, "Why not defence in the world? It's only about Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest - nothing terribly important." It leaves most of us on the Conservative Benches virtually speechless that a debate of such importance to our national interest, the well-being of our armed forces and the morale of their families should have its annual slot reduced to less than four hours.
That said, although passing reference was made by some blogs to the fact that there was only – for a while – one Labour back-bencher in the chamber, there were only four Tories. One was Ann Winterton and another was James Arbuthnot. The latter, as chairman of the defence committee, was virtually obligated to be there.
Nevertheless, apart from Booker, the lack of interest by our MPs seems only to have been picked up in the MSM by The Yorkshire Post while our earlier post was recorded by Anorak. On the other hand, Nick Harvey, the Lib-Dem spokesman, who stayed for the debate, took flak from his local paper for failing to vote in the elections, after his train home had been delayed. Nothing was reported of the content of the debate.
Thus, the substantive issues are being ignored, not least Ann Winterton's points about "a succession of vehicles that provided no proper protection against roadside bombs" – as Booker puts it. That situation is made worse by The Sunday Telegraph playing its usual games of censoring comments on the online version of Booker's column. Two "antis" have been allowed free rein but my two, posted before each of these, have yet to appear.
One must not, of course be, sanctimonious - heaven forefend – so it would not do to remark that there is something amiss with a society which cannot entertain real issues and thus feels the need to retreat into its own fantasy worlds. But, back in the real world, we are not alone in our concerns.
Where one would like to see the blogosphere leading the charge, dominating the political debate as it is doing in the United States, the heart sinks when we see the desperately trivial contribution to the "great constitutional debate" made by Tory Diary.
Oblivious to the discussions going on around him, Tim Montgomerie suggests only what amount to marginal changes, failing to address the fundamental failures in the system, arguing for such things as a five percent annual reduction in taxpayer funding of political parties until it is completely eliminated. Even his one substantive point, "A renegotiation of our relationship with Europe that will see key powers returned to Westminster" is weak, building on the Conservative myth that renegotiation is in fact a possibility.
Elsewhere, in the much-derided MSM, we get two intelligent contributions. One is from Adrian Hamilton in The Independent on reform of the Select Committee system. The other is from David Green, director of Civitas, in The Daily Telegraph.
Green offers "a radical solution would be to ensure the complete separation of powers by emulating countries such as Germany, France and the US, where government ministers are forbidden to serve in the elected assembly."
As for Hamilton, he argues that most select committees are led by placemen, made up of the mediocre and tasked with the irrelevant. He is worried that calls for reform are directed at the wrong problem. The aim, according to the reformers, he says, is to enable parliament better to hold the executive to account. Yet is setting up Commons Committees as attack dogs on the government really their most useful function, he asks. Hamilton thus continues:
If the problem were an overweening central government out of control, as the reformers suggest, that might be so. But the problem of government in Britain is not really an untrammelled executive, for all the size of recent parliamentary majorities. It is that policy making and legislation is so poor.
The failures of health and education policy, the negligence of financial regulation, the mistakes of military procurement, the lack of North Sea depletion policy or a balanced energy strategy, the perversion of Public-Private Finance Initiatives, the timidity of the transport approach, the tardiness of environmental measures – all these arise not from an over-strong executive, but a political system that has been unwilling or unable to work through and discuss alternative approaches to central issues.
Select committees ought to fulfil this function.
That is a good point, arguing for a more proactive involvement by committees. Riding a populist bandwagon after the event is not fulfilling any special public duty, says Hamilton, echoing our argument on defence procurement, where the committee should be involved before a purchasing decision is made. It should not be left merely to comment on the failures, some time after the event, when money had been wasted and men have died.
Arguably, these two issue of "separation of powers" and reform of the select committee system are amongst the most important we need to address. But they seem to have passed the political blogosphere by, and are sadly absent from Montgomerie's offerings.
Some long time ago, we reviewed a report on the political blogsophere, and not much seems to have changed since. The commentary is still largely lightweight and derivative, and the MSM is still making the running. The blogosphere needs to up its game.
Nor is this an academic issue. Despite the "right" preening itself on dominating the blogosphere, the BNP – as the above graphic shows – is still the lead political website by a long chalk. And yesterday, we saw another by-election success for the BNP, where it took 19 percent of the vote in Middlesborough's North Ormesby & Brambles Farm ward, coming second after Labour and relegating the Conservatives to third place.
Unless we as a collective are able to offer better, real improvements to the system, the BNP will win the argument by default. Either we fill the vacuum or they do.
As part of its programming in the run-up to the European elections, BBC4 News at 7 o'clock this evening will have a short debate between three bloggers. EUReferendum is one of the blogs taking part. The debate, I am told, will be shown about 7 minutes into the programme but these approximations are never accurate. Anyway, they will be showing an episode of The New Avengers afterwards, so that might be an inducement to watch. Personally I did not think Joanna Lumley was a patch on Honor Blackman (Cathy Gale) or, especially, Diana Rigg (Emma Peel), despite the hairstyle.
The debate will be broadcast on BBC World at the same time, which is actually 18.00 GMT.
ADDENDUM: The three bloggers will be back on Monday after the results have been announced across the EU. So, tune in then, folks.
Despite the strenuous cross-party campaign against it, and the attempts to "puff" UKIP in the hope that it will Hoover up the protest vote, the BNP continues to make steady progress in local authority by-elections. It has also produced a "shock" poll result which worries The Sunday Express, pulling 38.4 percent of voters' support compared with 19.2 percent for Labour.
As to the latest local authority by-election result, this was at Irwell Riverside in Salford MBC to the north west of Manchester. There, in a safe Labour seat, the incumbent held with 38 percent of the vote, losing 13 percent compared with the 2008 result. The Conservatives, in an election it was never going to win, polled 12 percent, losing nearly five percent of its share.
Of the minority parties, UKIP and the Greens both picked up 8 percent of the vote but the BNP took 17.1 percent, the only party to increase its share of the vote, up nearly four percent.
The BNP claim a "solid performance" in a ward with over 2000 students registered on the electoral role. The National Union of Students, the party says, had lobbied via the internet to get the student vote out to oppose the BNP, but their efforts met with only a lukewarm response.
It also claims that "the result was a big blow to the Tories" who not only worked hard in the ward and also had their campaign boosted by the arrival of the party's euros election address, delivered just 24 hours before the polls opened.
Coincidentally, the Sunday Express poll was carried out in the Salford constituency, currently held by communities secretary Hazel Blears. The survey of 500 voters showed that Ms Blears would lose her seat, but it also suggests that a disillusioned 55 percent would not vote at all.
But the "shock" is that the BNP picked up 38.4 percent support compared to 19.2 percent for Labour. Tories took 13.4 percent of the poll, the Lib-Dems 10.7 percent and the Greens and the UKIP 7.1 percent each – uncannily similar to the by-election vote. If the result is repeated across the North-West in the euros, says the paper, Nick Griffin will be elected as an MEP.
It is unlikely though that this level of support will be repeated throughout the region. Although BNP is showing strong cluster of support, it does not have the spread enjoyed by more established parties. Nevertheless, in recent elections in two Carlisle wards, the party scored 9.5 and 19.7 percent of the vote.
Then, in Moston in April, there was a closely-fought contest between Labour and the Tories. This resulted in a near 11 percent drop in the Labour vote, but a catastrophic drop of 14 percent for the Tories – with BNP getting 23 percent and coming second – in its first appearance in the ward.
The spread of results, on the back of the Salford poll, does suggest that BNP is indeed in with a chance in the euros and, on the basis of that performance, Griffin is set to become the BNP's first MEP – possibly displacing UKIP.
However, with the Archbishop of Canterbury worried that the current furore over MPs' allowances could "play into the hands of unpleasant fringe parties like the BNP", The Daily Telegraph is today warning of the dangers in constantly talking up the "threat" of the BNP.
Similarly, The Independent is cautioning: "We must stop exaggerating the threat of the BNP", yet also noting the powerful online presence of the party, reporting that figures from Alexa show the BNP registering more traffic than highly publicised political blogs such as Guido Fawkes. (We reported that on 12 April.)
For once though, Rowan Williams might be getting it right. If anything, both the Telegraph and the Independent seem to be understating the threat.
We smiled when we saw the story about Angela Browning paying £9,635 for her personal website. Yet, one London website designer with more than 10 years' experience in the industry said it should cost no more than £1,250 to set up and run. Philip Sweny, of Halpen Marketing, said: "It seems to be a very basic site."
Sweny is about right. The fee was for two-and-a-half years' service and we actually offered a package for MPs at £500 a year, including blogs, designed by North Jnr, who set up EU Referendum.
As it was, the seven-page website, which carries details of her constituency and parliamentary work, was instead designed by Parliamentary Liaison Services Ltd (PLS), run by Mark Fullbrook, the former head of campaigns at Conservative Central Office. Fullbrook works as a "communications adviser" for up to 20 Conservative MPs which, if they are all paying ten grand a throw, is a nice little earner for Fullbrook.
That number of "20 Conservative MPs" is one we recognise. It includes some of the Cornerstone mob. Some time ago, I was invited down to London (at my own expense - £150 train fare, etc, plus a day's work lost) to put a proposal to set up a group blog for them, plus individual member sites, all cross-linked. At £500 each, I thought it was an ambitious price, considering that North Jnr can set up a site for £120 and "care and maintenance" takes very little effort.
We even set up a very basic test site to show how easy it was to get up and running. Needless to say, we did not get the work. Individuals went to Mark Fullbrook instead and the Cornerstone Group runs its own blog - after a fashion.
Whether little Angela was aware of the deal, I do not know. She says she had followed guidance given to her by the fees office. "The contract for the website is to maintain and run it right up until the next election," she said. "I didn't get a second quote because I had dealt with the company before. That was the only claim I have ever made on the communications allowance."
Fullbrook insists that he has provided a good service. He said of the £9,635 charge: "We are a commercial company and we think the price was reasonable for the quality service we provided." We are so pleased for Mark, and equally impressed at the strenuous efforts made by our MPs to obtain the very best value when they spend our money.
Guido might preen about getting rid of a special advisor, but that's chump change compared with forcing the MoD to get rid of an entire fleet of vehicles.
The breakthrough actually came on Tuesday – entirely unreported of course – when defence secretary John Hutton told the House of Commons Defence Committee that the Vector was the "least successful" of the armoured vehicles purchased by the MoD under the UOR process. "Mistakes were probably made there," he told the committee. Well done James Arbuthnot, who has amply made up for his earlier lapse.
The news, however, was not made official until yesterday, when the MoD announced that it was to withdraw the Vector from operations in Afghanistan after admitting "it is too vulnerable as roadside bombs get bigger."
The qualification is, of course, "spin" – corporate face-saving to avoid admitting that it bought the wrong vehicle which was never suitable for operations and always was going to kill people. With blast protection rated at the equivalent of two hand grenades, its capability to withstand even a single mine was nil.
Covering his employer's back, an MoD spokesman said that, "Since its introduction to theatre, the evolving threat from larger improvised explosive devices on operations has led to a requirement for more medium and heavy capability vehicles to withstand these devices."
Thus, said the spokesman, "Following the delivery of Mastiff 2, Ridgeback and vehicles from the protected mobility package announced [by the MoD] in October 2008, we intend to withdraw Vector from operations in Afghanistan. This will be a phased withdrawal and will not lead to any capability gap."
In fact, the Vectors have already been withdrawn. They are sitting in vehicle parks, unused by troops who have moved to the more heavily protected Mastiff. Ironically, manufacturers BAE Systems have still to complete the order, with 20 outstanding, which means they will come straight from the factory to the scrap heap.
This is at a cost (including the support element) of £487,000 each, the MoD having bought nearly 200 of these "coffins on wheels" as we called them back in July 2006. That is only just short of £100 million wasted on a piece of kit that should never have been bought. That is £100 million wasted, which could have been spent on better, life-saving kit. And the Army complains of being "underfunded".
The worst of it is that, as we recount here, the Army chose this killer as a replacement for the Snatch Land Rover and, when it proved more dangerous even than this vulnerable vehicle, the Snatch had to be kept in service and uparmoured to fill a gap of the Army's own making.
We have consistently opposed this vehicle, right from the early days, and have been warning of its unsuitability for well over two years, attracting the support of Ann Winterton and, finally, Gerald Howarth (who originally endorsed the machine). Thomas Harding of the Daily Telegraph also joined in, with a welcome piece.
Booker made some powerful interventions in The Sunday Telegraph, especially in August 2007, despite the interference of the MoD, which tried to stop us publishing with a "D-advisory" – the modern equivalent of a D-Notice.
We even had attempts by the manufacturers to sweet talk us, inviting us down to the factory in Guildford to see the virtues of this machine for ourselves. When we made the visit conditional on the managing director demonstrating the "safety" of the machine by driving over a live mine, we heard no more.
The interesting thing is that, although the Army made a serious error, as a result of which good men died unnecessarily, the withdrawal of this dreadful machine will get very little coverage in the MSM. And, having ignored the death toll from this machine, I confidently predict that the withdrawal will also be ignored by the so-called political blogs.
In fact, though, this is real politics – about holding government to account, challenging its decisions and forcing it to address its errors. This blog played its part. As a result of the efforts of many, men will live who would otherwise have died and families which otherwise would have suffered grievous loss will now be spared. Just occasionally, the system works.
It is quite amusing in a macabre sort of way to see the so-called "political" media and blogs dive for cover when there is a real political issue on the agenda.
And whatever the finer details, the final retreat of the British from Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan are intensely political issues which cast their shadow into the future, defining and shaping our defence and foreign policies and indeed our perception of ourselves as a nation.
The sheer complexity of the issues, however, defy easy analysis. Furthermore, the paucity of information make attempts at analysis and comment prone to error and misunderstanding, while following through the threads of discussion and argument require brutally hard work.
All of which might explain in part why so many take the easy option and either ignore the issues or rely on "drive-by" comment little better informed than "man-in-pub" gossip.
Heavily into that category is the pathetically tivial analysis of the Iraqi campaign by David Blair in The Daily Telegraph. This is put into perspective by just one comment on the online edition. It reads:
As a former regular officer, I am fed up with all these pieces of so-called reportage which are permeated by talk of the Forces' "quiet pride". Sickening stuff. This article is very short on statistics - and offers not even a perspective on the situation from a few locals which might answer the headline's question. The whole Iraq episode was shameful - politically and strategically, even if individual soldiers did their duty as (still!) expected.
This, in respect of Iraq is very much the line we take. Individual soldiers did do their duty and too many paid the ultimate price for what indeed were "shameful" military and political failures. At least, though, The Times is reporting defence secretary John Hutton declaring that there would need to be a "proper investigation" into the failings of the mission.
It is this which is exercising David Cameron and other opposition politicians, with Cameron calling for an immediate inquiry similar to that carried out by Lord Franks following the Falklands War in 1982. "After years of foot dragging," he says, "I believe it is the time for the Government to announce a proper Franks-style inquiry. Instead of starting in many months' time, it should start right now."
The problem is, however, that this is likely to rake over old ground as The Telegraph suggests that an inquiry is expected "to examine the faulty intelligence that led to the invasion, including information on weapons of mass destruction, and should look at why British forces were poorly equipped and under-resourced."
Con Coughlin picks up on this on his blog, arguing that Cameron should forget the Iraq inquiry and concentrate on Afghanistan.
"I would love," writes Coughlin, "to see David Cameron show the same enthusiasm for discussing our critical mission to Afghanistan as he does with his repeated calls for an inquiry into the invasion of Iraq." Given that we have already had two inquiries into the build-up to the war - Hutton and Butler – he cannot see what new material would be provided by a third.
What really worries me, he adds, is that while the leader of Her Majesty's Opposition is happy to provoke debate about events that happened six years ago, he is less forthcoming about the current parlous state of our military.
Coughlin, as so often, is both right and wrong. He is right that there is little to be gained by once again rehashing the events that led up to the Iraqi war. But there is everything to be gained from an inquiry which is focused specifically on the conduct of the post-invasion occupation and counter-insurgency campaign which started formally in 1 May 2003 and ended yesterday.
Not least, many "lessons learned" from such an inquiry would be directly applicable to the current military adventure in Afghanistan, where the same mistakes are being made that we saw in Iraq.
However, what is concerning Coughlin is his view that Gordon Brown has "seriously undermined the effectiveness of our military commitment to Afghanistan" by refusing to authorise the deployment of the extra troops our commanders require to fulfil the mission. This, he says, is a golden opportunity for Mr Cameron and his defence team to drive another nail into the coffin of this increasingly discredited government.
And yet, he asks rhetorically, what have we heard from the Opposition on Afghanistan, an issue that is infinitely more important and perilous than Iraq? The answer is: "Next to nothing."
Perversely, there is a response from the Conservative opposition but it comes not from David Cameron or, as you might expect, shadow defence secretary Liam Fox. Instead, in The Independent we see former shadow home secretary and now back-bencher David Davis. He writes under the heading: "Brown's policy in Afghanistan is never going to work".
It would have helped Mr Davis's scribing if he had shown any knowledge of what "Brown's policy" actually was. In the absence of any such knowledge, so fatuous and superficial are his comments, including the obligatory reference to "Vietnam", that they need not detain us.
What is worrying Coughlin though is his perception that "Brown's half measures will put our soldiers' lives at further risk". Falling for exactly the same military/MoD "spin" that afflicted Michael Evans yesterday, in a long piece in the print edition, repeated online, thus tells us that "Peace in Afghanistan will be even longer in coming if the Army is not at full strength."
As usual when dealing with a Gordon Brown policy initiative, we are told, the devil is in the detail. Couglin then ignores that detail – and the background to it – and writes that "by far the most alarming feature is the humiliating rebuff he has delivered to our Armed Forces." By denying the request by senior officers for an extra 2,000 troops, Mr Brown is seriously jeopardising the chances of achieving the success he craves.
This extra manpower, we are informed, would make the world of difference to commanders on the ground, giving them the resources not only to capture territory, but to hold it. All too often, important gains have been made, only to be surrendered because of a shortage of troops.
"Put simply, the more troops we have, the more able we are to dominate the space in Helmand and keep the Taleban at bay," says a senior Army officer. "Without the extra troops, we simply won't have the resources to impose our presence on Helmand in the way we would like."
Strangely, it is Michael Evans who – doubtless unwittingly – in his own piece today gives us the clue as to why more troops are not the answer. There we see evidence of the same ponderous "garrison mentality" referred to on the Rand Report on the Rhodesian counter-insurgency, which we reviewed in March.
This was also brought up by Ann Winterton in the recent procurement debate, where she pointed out that, while convention dictates a ratio of 10:1 for security forces needed to combat insurgents, the Rhodesians succeeded with a ratio of 1:1 and a minuscule budget. Thus did she remind us:
The Rhodesian security forces functioned under severe financial constraints that limited their access to late model, sophisticated high tech weapons and to large quantities of material. The Rhodesians’ ability to overcome these constraints by embracing innovative strategies and tactics, including novel techniques in road security, tracking and reconnaissance, small unit tactics, special operations, and intelligence gathering, suggests that the successful prosecution of counter insurgency need not entail huge expenditure.
However, neither the military nor the journos seem to be able to drag themselves out of the "more resources" mindset, the latest to join the refrain being the Financial Times, which offers its own story of the Army's woe, with the legend: "UK block on Afghan surge riles army chiefs."
The paper cites a "senior defence figure" who gets the boot in, telling us: "People are pretty angry about the decision around here … We're not in a situation where generals are thinking of resigning. But the outcome announced by Number 10 this week has come as something of a surprise to people."
It should not have surprised anyone who knew what was going on. We flagged up the doubts here and here and the Financial Times itself points to on of the reasons why this "surge" was never going to happen. Some Whitehall officials, the paper says, argue that the UK operation in Afghanistan is well resourced. They note that the operation will cost a projected £3bn in 2009-10, while the cost of UK operations in southern Iraq never rose above £1.5bn.
Despite this, it seems the editorial writer cannot read his own paper, offering a leader headed: "War on the cheap." The point, of course, is that not only is the campaign in Afghanistan not cheap, the military have yet to be able to demonstrate whether they are getting (or could get) any useful effects from the flood of cash pouring into theatre.
But, as the hacks pile in, with Robert Fox of The Guardian adding his penn'orth, there is not a single one of them with an original thought.
Still, the basic flaw in the strategic thinking survives unchallenged, typified in a Reuteurs report, which has an interview with Brigadier David Hook in Helmand. Warning that a "Bloody summer" looms, he tells us that insurgent attacks in the first three months of this year were 73 percent higher than the same period a year ago.
But, with the influx of US troops, he talks of international forces being able to provide a "degree" of security to over 90 percent of the population in the south, up from 60 percent. "That is the pivot point," he says. "That is the point where we will have created the humanitarian space to allow the agencies to come in behind and do the reconstruction and development."
There is it in all its glory – this totally artificial distinction between "security" and "reconstruction and development", with the latter conditional on the former. As long as there is this continued failure to understand the very point that is addressed in "Brown's policy", there is going to be no progress at all in Afghanistan.
They didn't get it in Iraq, and they don't get it now. Watch the video (and enjoy the little girlie struggling).
On a slow Easter bank holiday, the McBride story comes as a gift to both the MSM and the political blogosphere, with much ill-informed comment and some sensible points made.
We do not intend to dwell on this other than to make a few quick points about the structural relationship between the blogosphere, the MSM and the political classes, the former in their own ways laying claim to being the "watchdogs" of the latter.
Looking at this in the round, when it comes to venality in our ruling classes, there are perhaps three categories of default about which we need to be concerned.
The first is the most obvious, where one or other of the men or women at the top of their particular greasy pole is seen visibly "dropping balls", the latest and most spectacular example being Bob Quick. There, the punishment is immediate – and not uncommonly over the top.
The second category is the breach of moral rules, such as the expenses scandal, many of the sexual affairs and, as we have seen with the McBride affair, the low grade political activities which transcend the bounds of acceptable behaviour (even if practised by all sides).
There again, depending on the mood of the moment and the amount of attention given to the issue, the punishment can be extreme and again can sometimes be over the top, always driven by media (and now blogger) momentum rather than any cool judgement.
The third category is not so obvious – but is perhaps the most damaging of all. This is the quiet mediocrity or part-share involvement in long slow-burn incompetence that we see so often amongst MPs, ministers and officials. It is one or the other that so often costs us a fortune, that kills people and creates injustice, inefficiency and despair.
It is this category also which is most neglected by the MSM and which thus presents the best opportunity for the blogosphere to operate to effect, carving out virgin territory and bringing hidden issues to light.
However, with very few exceptions, this has not happened. Instead, the political blogosphere is operating in exactly the same territory as the MSM, fighting over the same bones and occasionally running away with the spoils of victory.
But that leaves this huge and damaging area of government activity still largely unchecked. Thus, a largely iconoclastic dynamic has been reinforced. There is still little light shed on the incompetent and mediocre, and therefore very little punishment for either.
Thus, blogs are to an extent exacerbating an already dangerous trend. Many great achievements in politics and history have been driven by larger-than-life characters like Charlie Wilson. In today's purulent, febrile atmosphere, they would struggle to survive. Who now, with any colour in their background, would stand for elected office?
In almost Darwinian terms, we are reinforcing a scrutiny system where incompetents and the mediocre become the survivors. The selection process ensures that only they remain in office, unpunished and prosperous, having learnt that the great art in life is to do as little as possible and keep your nose clean.
The blogosphere is not therefore really changing things. It is largely copying the MSM, albeit sometimes in a more refreshing and immediate way. This is not a revolution, simply more of the same in a different format with a wider cast of players.
Idle, salacious and downright scurrilous Westminster gossip about Tory leaders and others has been circulating so long that the "smear-mails" are easily detected by the spam filter and dumped, saving the trouble of checking them and deleting them manually.
Thus when Matthew d'Ancona writes in The Sunday Telegraph of the current spate of media excitability, he is absolutely spot-on in his observation. "[People] know all this and more," he writes. "And – guess what? – they don't seem to care."
Indeed, they do not, which rather puts the whole McBride affair into perspective. It is the ultimate "Westminster bubble" story, of huge interest to the political classes and of very little interest to anyone else.
By this measure, the headline covering d'Ancona's extrusions is only half right. It proclaims that: "The Damian McBride scandal shows just how out of touch Labour is". That may be the case, but the torrent of media coverage actually shows how out of touch is the entire political class.
But, with the British political blogosphere at the centre of the soap opera, this brings Daniel Hannan, journalist, blogger and part-time MEP into the fray.
He would have us believe that the "Draper-McBride affair" is the latest demonstration of one of his long-standing contentions, viz that free-marketeers take more naturally to the possibilities of the internet than Lefties. Lefties, opines Hannan, tend to believe in control (or, as they prefer to put it, "collective action"). They don't understand that the web is the enemy of regulation. Instead, they struggle to press the internet into their existing systems, treating it as just one more way to get their message across.
Thus, according to the great sage, the whole episode shows how blogs have pulverised the old media and political monopolies.
It takes one of Hannan's own commenters to put an alternative view, arguing that, "… those in the blogging industry pride themselves a bit too much on 'being in the know' as it were. It's a closed incestuous community of bloggers which feed off each other. They rate themselves too highly. The ordinary voter, readers of the Mirror and Sun aren't in the least bit bothered at the antics that bloggers get up to."
Certainly, the "right wing" blogosphere is incestuous. Some might regard it as a self-referential claque of political groupies and wannabes, all churning over the same material, linking to each other, telling themselves how wonderful they are and giving each other awards and accolades.
While we might not go as far that that, there is certainly a case to be made that, while the "claque" preens itself over its potency and influence, the ground is being cut from under it, without it even noticing.
Guido Fawkes may thus be the darling of the claque but while he rejoices in an Alexa traffic rank of 72,546, the BNP website currently ranks at 47,268 – so much for Hannan's view of the free marketeers taking more naturally to the possibilities of the internet than Lefties.
However, while the BNP is host to the most popular British political site on the web, there are other players in the field as well. So, while Conservative Home boasts a ranking of 145,084, as of yesterday, the Hizb ut-Tahir site ranked 89,748.
Make of that what you will, but the fact is that the "right" certainly does not own the internet. There is life outside the self-referential Westminster bubble and, while the political claque babbles, there are things stirring in the real world. Out and about in North Yorkshire, you can bet that the fate of Mr McBride is not on everyone's lips.
Meanwhile, in a long piece in The Sunday Telegraph, Mary Riddell writes a long review of the film "State of Play” (print edition), lamenting the demise of the newspaper industry. With its demise, she says, "Democracy itself is under threat".
Looking at the front-page headlines this morning, the contrast between the picture painted by "State of Play" and the reality is all too evident. We have a litany of contradictions, where the abject triviality and venality of the Westminster bubble is marginalising itself, drowned in the torrent of its own self-regard.
When it finally wakes up, the world it believes it inhabits may no longer exist - not that it ever did.
A leader in The Australian today suggests how the debate in beginning to be shaped by the revelations on the generous Dr Pachauri, who gives all his pocket money to his own institute – without then declaring how much he gets in return.
The triumphalism and euphoria of the (not the) Conservative Party over the Norwich North by-election is only to be expected of a tribal system where winning is all. However, since the winner took only 18 percent of the popular vote, this is not so much a victory as a sign of a political system in crisis.
I first heard that there had been another IED strike on a Viking early Wednesday evening, long before there was any media coverage. This was from Thomas Harding of The Daily Telegraph, who told me two soldiers had been killed, and more injured.
One of the explanations for the unseemly rush to get the Waxman-Markey Bill through Congress is that the warmists are on the back foot. The global warming tide is shifting against them and, before too long, their creed will be consigned to the dustbin of history as yet another of those mad obsessions that periodically grip the masses.
Climate change minister Stewart Stevenson (pictured) said: "Scotland can be proud of this bill, the most ambitious and comprehensive piece of climate change legislation anywhere in the world." 
"The British National Party achieved its most significant electoral breakthrough last night when it won two seats in the European Parliament."
Despite the strenuous cross-party campaign against it, and the attempts to "puff" UKIP in the hope that it will Hoover up the protest vote, the BNP continues to make steady progress in local authority by-elections. It has also produced a "shock" poll result which worries The Sunday Express, pulling 38.4 percent of voters' support compared with 19.2 percent for Labour.
We smiled when we saw the story about Angela Browning paying £9,635 for her personal website. Yet, one London website designer with more than 10 years' experience in the industry said it should cost no more than £1,250 to set up and run. Philip Sweny, of Halpen Marketing, said: "It seems to be a very basic site."
Guido might preen about getting rid of a special advisor, but that's chump change compared with forcing the MoD to get rid of an entire fleet of vehicles.
On a slow Easter bank holiday, the McBride story comes as a gift to both the MSM and the political blogosphere, with much ill-informed comment and some sensible points made.
While we might not go as far that that, there is certainly a case to be made that, while the "claque" preens itself over its potency and influence, the ground is being cut from under it, without it even noticing.