Guy News: Britain's Election HQ

LBC Tonight 8pm

TB will be chewing the election fat on LBC radio tonight at 8.

Sorry about lack of blogging today.

Dave Rallies the Troops

Tiny Caption Contest

You know what to do...

The Village Fete

Incredible scenes on College Green:

The forts are erected!

On the Wagon

Sky's Joey Jones is travelling on the Cameron bus and he's armed with a Blackberry camera. It looks like the "Joey Casts" are going to become a regular...



Good idea, though could do with the gossip.

Let's Go

Meanwhile in Westminster:



"This used to be a green and pleasant land."

Sky News 10pm

TB will be on da telly tonight just after 10pm, talking about some election. Not sure who he's on with but it will be someone from Labour. Got to dash back to London and remember to shave off sideburns. On reflection, they look ridiculous. 

Tatchell's Dangerous Mud-Slinging

As ever mouthy Peter Tatchell is quick to bash the Tories in the Guardian's

Comment is Free

today. He once again puppets the line about how damaging the Tories allies are in Europe. As is so often the case with the left though, they fail to check their own house is in order before going on the attack. Perhaps Peter should speak out against Leopolds Ozoliņš, an MP for the Latvian Green Party - united under the

European Green Party

along with Tatchell.

Leopolds Ozoliņš is

on the record

using all of the following quotes when talking about homosexuality:

• ‘perverse cult’
• ‘recta operators’
• ‘ass-fuckers’
• ‘homosexuality is a very nasty mental disorder’
• ‘homosexuality promotes peadophilia and spread of HIV and hepatitis C’
• ‘homosexuality is perverse, degenerating and human health mutilating lifestyle’

Anything to say about that Peter?

As TB has said before, both the Greens and Labour need to think twice before they attack the Tories for their European allies.

Of course there is an easy solution to all this...

Buckingham Palace, Tuesday 15:30

According to

Political Scrapbook

Gordon has a date with Liz tomorrow afternoon at 15:30. If this is true then shockingly it would be the first time James Macintyre, the New Statesman's "Mr Insider" has ever got 

a story correct

.

TB hopes this gives the BBC and Sky time to finish building their little forts on College Green. No doubt there will be helicopters too. Gordon will then been hosting a PPC event before going back to Downing Street.

Presumably to start packing.

UPDATE: Gordon meets the Queen anyway at 15.30 on a Tuesday and people are rightly suggesting this is late in the day. Adam Boulton is clearly

wired in

to the Buckingham Palace catering service and says the Queen will be available "after her breakfast". Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Quote of the Day

"Almost half are prominent local councillors – many of them council leaders – and one in six trade union employees or activists. Many more are government special advisers, work for Labour MPs or are ex-MPs seeking to return.

Labour is also drawing heavily from the public sector for its candidates, contrasting sharply with the Conservatives, many of whose standard-bearers worked in business or commerce."

-

The Indy

on Labour's candidates

And So It Begins...

Britain’s most highly decorated serving soldier last night personally attacked Gordon Brown for ‘disrespecting’ the Armed Forces.

Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry also revealed that he refused to shake the Prime Minister’s hand at a Remembrance Day event last year.

Mr Brown has now written a personal letter of apology to Lance Corporal Beharry, who in 2005 was awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery in Iraq.

Lance Corporal Beharry said that Mr Brown had fidgeted throughout the two-minute silence held at the Cenotaph in November. “We were representing the Army in front of him and he didn’t seem to care less,”

Let's hope Brown spelt his name write in the apology

letter

.

Chris Gayling

This is not a matter of Grayling standing up for what he believes in, if it was he wouldn't have voted for the legislation he was speaking out against. Right? If this was a "matter of principle" Grayling would have resigned on a "matter of principle" when he refused to vote with his Party. Oh wait. Instead he has shown himself to be a hypocritical careerist toad, biting the bullet and swallowing his beliefs for a sniff of power. It's a mess and safe to say, even if he clings on for the next five weeks, he won't be won't be taking up an office anywhere near Horseferry Road.

Over promoted, gaffe prone and completely lacking in any any savvy-ness, Grayling has been a walking shit-magnet ever since he was given the Shadow Home Office brief. He was a great attack dog but that doesn't mean he is suitable for high office. TB doesn't believe he is homophobic, but he should have been more shrewd. For better or worse, he may well have been standing up for Christian rights, but he must have realised this close to an election that people would be on the look out for any excuse to piss on the Tory bonfire. An idiot rather than bigot. Grayling is clearly not A-team material and has ruined an otherwise perfect eve-of-the-election-weekend. Well done.

But this is not the first time Grayling has caused a sharp intake of breath for TB. He sums up everything wrong with the authoritarian, "hang em and flog em" tory-ism. Want to see this hard streak? Just look at his cosying up to the likes of Alan Johnson whenever the D word is mentioned.

So we have established that Grayling is a tit. But that doesn't give an excuse for the scummy fringe of the left to bring out their classic attacks on gay Tories. The LGBT Labour movement should take a long reflective moment before they carry on with how they have begun today. Take one of their most vile, aggressive and disgustingly bigoted members Kev Peel for example.

Young Kevin has used today to spread some of his more

ignorant and inflammatory ideas

. He has suggested that all gay tories are "self loathing, repressed and rather homophobic". Sorry but WTF?

Since when does who someone beds determine their entire political outlook? Why should someone's sexuality, unless standing purely on these particular issues, determine how they vote? What goes on in the bedroom is nothing to do with the state, a political party or even a hotel owner. Peel should apologise for the disgusting slurs. His amateur and immature arguments should be immediately disowned by LGBT Labour and the Party as a whole. If they are not they are showing a fascinating insight into the homophobic mindset of their party.

Yes you read that right, to suggest that someone should be enslaved by their sexuality and make sure it determines every single decision they make is an homophobic outlook. It shows they feel that somehow a gay person is unequal from someone who doesn't have to make every decision based on their sexuality. Grow up Kev. 


UPDATE: A gay Tory gets in touch to say of Kev: "It's disgustig, similar to what Ben Bradshaw comes out with. I like how he's now trying to portray himself as a 'minor labour person' and his views are just his own. So were Graylings but he's still insulting thousands of gay people who vote Tory."

Labour's Casual Regard for Privacy

While in government Labour have lost thousands of gigabytes of data be it secret military inteligence or the personal details of thousands of citizans. It will come as no surprise that at party level they have an almost piss-taking attitude toward the Data Protection Act. Sites like

Ed's Pledge

and

Back the Ban

are nothing more than email address harvesting exercise.

Greg Hands is clearly enjoying his new role as the Tories attack dog. He seems to have been charged with going after Blair and he's doing rather well at it. In a

long piece on ConHome

he unravels how by signing up to receive email updates from Downing Street in 2007, his data was transferred through Tony Blair's murky business and charity dealings and finally ended up in the hands of the Labour Party. This being a breach of not only Data Protection Laws but also highlights some intriguing questions about Blair's charities and their connections to his business interests and the Labour Party.

Read Hand's excellent investigation

here

.

Dust to Dust

Labour aren't having a good weekend. On the eve of the election being called the momentum and the lead is back with the Tories. Much of this is down to George Osborne who once again playing a great hand on a fiscal announcement. Once it was the IHT cut and now it's the pledge to make seven out ten working people better off by removing Brown and Darling's national insurance increase.

And of course Labour's bad weekend can be blamed on their poster disaster. Expect the Milibands to come under much fire next week for the cock up. Already the blame game is starting. TB put a call into one of his best Labour sources, a senior party figure who had seen an advanced copy of the poster, to poke fun. He wasn't expecting quite such rage though:

"We're getting the worst reactions at the doorstep: indifference and inattention. Even people who watched the show last night didn't get the reference, and the vast majority of the country didn't watch the show. HQ just don't get it."

Another Labour hack said "I can't believe what a f*** up this weekend has been."

Every newspaper and even the BBC are slamming the poster and the polls tonight are expected to show an increased Tory lead. You want to get yourselves a decent ad agency chaps.

Don't Miss

TB is enjoying a few days off catching up on lots of things before the scrum kicks off on Tuesday. It seems the campaigns are still going strong though over the weekend. If you are switching off for the a couple of days make sure you note these two must reads/watches. Firstly David Cameron's

pitch for PM

in The Telegraph and how his political journey makes him the man for the top job:

"It was nine years ago, but every second is etched on my memory. I couldn’t stop fidgeting as I chewed gum, paced the draughty hall and smoked (I still hadn’t given up by then). The hours dragged by, the torture seeming to get only more intense. Every ballot box that was emptied appeared to have crosses for my opponents, not for me. My stomach was in knots, a gnawing dread that my second attempt to win a seat in Parliament would end in failure again."

Secondly catch up with BBC Parliament's half hour "

Hard Talk

" with Heather Brooke:

She get's quite a grilling and handles her own well in yet another, but ultimately fascinating, insight into her campaign against the establishment. 

Labour's Taliban Moment

For all the smug stirring that Labour did during a wee bit of Tory PPC trouble in Norfolk and Westminster North, they don't half know how to have a bun-fight themselves. Tristram Hunt's selection in Stoke-On-Trent has gone down like a cup of cold sick. The Labour spin operation and more feverent loyal grassrooters have gone into overdrive dismissing any criticism of the selction process as "pathetic" or "beserk". Others are worried though and a clear split in the Party nationally is emerging.

The main lightening rod for the "forces of hell" appears to be Gary Elsby, who believed that he was the favourite to take the seat and is having one mighty tantrum now he has been pushed aside by Mandy's little friend. He is now running as an independent labour candidate and threatening to take the CLP with him. No fewer than three of TB's more metropolitan Labour chums have pointed out 

this piece

by Ed Howker this morning. It seems Mr Elsby has a track record as a loose cannon and it's perhaps for the best that someone with his thought process is kept as far away from Westminster as possible. Here is a selection of comments Elsby has left on blogs:

Iain Dale's Diary: June 23, 2006 2:13 PM Gary Elsby said...

"MI5 undermined Wilson.
MI5 led the miners.
MI5 infiltrated the EC of scargill
MI6 set up the Falklands war
Why do you consider it patriotic for the state(?) to usurp the people?
Why do you support a party that instigated crimes against society of
which we cut off a King's head?
The Conservative party are aparty of traitors. Accept it..."

Iain Dale's Diary June 25, 2006 3:56 PM , Gary Elsby said...

"My point is really quite simple and appears lost to you die hards. The Tories funded Hitlers rising Nazi party and are mostly responsible for what happened next. Your lot tried to stop it by collaborating. Hess, Speer and hundreds of Nazi's colluded with the Tories to accept a Nazi Britain. You have MI5 and MI6 to give you a hand and Labour have no-one. The Falkland islands was a definite Tory plot defining Britain against allcomers. The Tories deliberately weakened our protection in full knowledge of mpending invasion. I'm thinking of writing a book...'The Tories are treacherous,treasonous bastards' Available from all good books shops. Gary"

Dizzy Thinks: 20 Feb 2008 22:44:00 Gary Elsby labour said...

"The only good Tory is a dead Tory. gary"

Dizzy Thinks: 21 Feb 2008 10:43:00

"CORRECTION:
The only good Tory is a dead Tory. I'm sorry, this is a tad wrong. The only Tory is a dead Tory that I am present at the burial. You know what lying bastards Tories are! They say they are dead, but they lie! Gary"

Ministry of Truth: March 20th, 2008 Gary Elsby stoke-on-trent said...

"Tories are lying, cheating bastards. I already knew this. Gary"

You can see now why Mr Elsby's claim that he was an appropriate candidate for Parliament might have been met with some disdain by the more sensible elements of the Labour Party.

Quote of the Day

Labour thinks the 1980s were unpopular. The truth is, nothing in the 1980s was more unpopular than the Labour Party itself.

-

Greg Hands

Why Labour Should Learn to Stop Panicking and Love the Eighties

After all the fuss about the open-sourcing of the new Labour poster, it seems Victoria Street would have been better off sticking to their own in-house washed out ideas. As even the left online are accepting, the Ashes to Ashes spoof poster is a spectacular own goal. Well done, rather than exploit weaknesses, you've managed to associate Cameron with a popular, working class, funny figure. And sorry, what exactly was wrong with Eighties?

If the 1980s were so bad, why was the key moment of change in the Labour Party the dropping of Clause Four and the acceptance that the values and practices of the Eighties made this country great and changed for the better how it was run forever. New Labour was built on Eighties values.

Labour seem determined to take us back to the Seventies, to the days of strikes and unions holding the country over the barrel. The reason Labour don't want the Conservatives to take us back to the Eighties is because it would make the entire Labour Party as it stands today an irrelevance. New Labour was an Eighties-lite project and an incoming Conservative government will force it into the dustbin of history where it belongs. 

This last ditch attack shows just how shallow and hollow the whole idea was. Labour supporters clearly do not understand what made Blair and New Labour attractive and electable. Just look at the disgusting class-based drivel of the entries that didn't win the competition to show you just how idiotic and moronic the active Labour grass-roots are. It was Blair's embracing of the Eighties that means the Labour Party, for better or worse, still exists today. Bring on May 6th so this floundering, broken, deluded and misguided project can finally be put out of its misery. 

The Election is Called