TB in St. Trop...

Tory Bear is taking it rather easy in the shade today after a marathon twelve hour rosé session in St Tropez yesterday. Luckily, especially for

LabourList

editor Alex Smith, who TB understands is a particular fan of his wardrobe, someone had a camera...

Blogging will probably be light today as TB's head hurts. There is some more NHS/Twitter rage brewing, but it seems Dizzy has hit the nail on the head with

this cracking post though

. Wondered how long it would take for

this

to happen too.

Back to sun instead. Shame.

Hannan4Westminster

Blogs editor Damian Thompson has a must read piece

over at the Telegraph

:

"So Daniel Hannan attacks socialised medicine on American television, and immediately Dave slaps him down. Is it because of his criticism of the National Health Service, or because of the way he criticised it - that is, with an eloquence and forensic command of detail that makes most members of the shadow cabinet sound like jargon-spouting middle managers?

If Dan was an MP, the Conservatives would be forced to engage in the very thing that frightens them most: ideological debate."

The truth hurts.

Quote of the Day

In response to Stephen Fry's dribble that: “Even the most right wing British politician wouldn’t think of dismantling our health service.”

Liberal Conspiracy commenter

"cjcjc" said:

I wonder when Stephen Fry last saw the inside of an NHS facility?

Is it *just possible* that the rest of the world has not copied the NHS because it is not the best system in the world?

Sound.

Discuss: Blogging Vs. The Reformation

TB is working through a large collection of books he has wanted to read for months but hasn’t had the time. One he would recommend is

TownHall

contributor Hugh Hewitt’s

“Blog – What you must know how the blogosphere is smashing the old media monopoly and giving individuals power in the marketplace of ideas.”

While is a few years old, it nonetheless gives an fascinating account of the history of the American blogosphere, it’s biggest casualties such as Kerry and Dan Rather, as well as advice to anyone wanting to expand their influence. However throughout the book Hewitt continually compares the power of blogging to that of Martin Luther. On first impression this is a slightly pretentious and over ambitious analogy. Hewitt writes;

What is really going on is an information reformation similar in consequence to the Reformation that split Christianity in the sixteenth century. The key to that Reformation was the wide dissemination of Scripture among the increasingly literate laity. Today we do not have a canon, but we do have an appetite for information, the arrival of new technology of distribution, and a million willing content providers. The old guard of old media is in a situation very similar to the Roman Catholic Church’s situation when Luther arose to challenge the pope’s authority. Once Luther’s spark set the fire, the availability of editions of the Bible made the collapse of the Church’s authority inevitable, though the struggle was long and often bloody.

...

You should thus be persuaded that the last couple of years have been important for blogging. But it is much bigger than that. That’s like saying 1517 was a big year for Martin Luther. Both statements are true but do not communicate the scope of the change that was initiated in those years. To get a glimpse of what is coming, try examining what followed Luther’s challenge to the authority of Rome. As Luther was to Leo, so bloggers are to MSM, and Luther’s impact wasn’t limited to the Vatican.

While it is true that the MSM are under threat and are running scared, is it really realistic to compare this online revolution to that of the 16th century? The very suggestion brings the line of bloggers being self-obsessed, arrogant and self indulgent immediately to mind. On the one hand the significance of the Reformation came down to the printing press and the free distribution of text. Surely blogging is just the same idea via an alternative method of distribution? A mere development, but the other hand Hewitt proves the other side of the coin can just as easily be argued. Have we, or are we, witnessing the second Reformation?

Discuss.

TB makes pizza...

Should TB write a recipe book? Joking apart, it seems TB's new found (mainly female) American audience are loving the constant bear related photo updates, so they will continue...

On a completely different note. Here is some

background reading

on our Don't Panic friend.

The word swampy comes to mind.

Lee Jasper - Mixing Business with Pleasure...

Livingstone City Hall aide Lee Jasper

quit in disgrace

after his sexually charged emails were forwarded to the Standard. Surely he should be the last person to be hosting a "Business with Pleasure" event:

Some people never learn eh!

Keep the Change

TB just recieved this email from the ever sharp-eyed SilverFox:

Have you seen

this rot

on the Labour Party website? They're encouraging members of the public to send in photos/tweets etc of "change we see" - in other words, new schools, hospitals, roads etc. Presumably next we'll be championing a Party member who has mined the most coal?

It's horrifying. My suggestion is that we send in photos/tweets of sink estates, gangs of NEETS, dirty hospitals, etc etc.

Get the camera phones out kids.

Don't panic they're just Lib Dems.

Keep Right Online

have got the 101 on who exactly is behind these Don't Panic vids. Their

expose

is well worth a read.

Seems like it's a Liberal Youth member. This comes as quite a surprise to TB as most members of LY he has come across couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery.

And a Lib Dem with a sense of humour? Surely not!

The good life...

TB decided to stop running the country now that Mr-Rent-a-Quote Mandy has returned home and instead decided to get drunk at lunchtime.

Boxed baked camembert and a watermelon full of vodka... The perfect lunch.

Just go...

It has often been speculated that Alan Duncan won't be in Dave's cabinet next year but the man is a damn liability in the run up to the election.

Don't Panic

- who are fast becoming nothing more than a Labour front group, have once again

stitched up a tory

. Who could forget the painful CF expose, not that Mr Duncan's comments are excusable:

"Shadow Commons leader Alan Duncan has apologised "unreservedly" after he was secretly filmed complaining about MPs' pay and expenses.

The Tory MP was heard to say MPs were being treated badly after the expenses scandal and "have to live on rations".

Mr Duncan said the remarks, made to campaigner Heydon Prowse of Don't Panic magazine, were meant as a joke"

Mr Duncan's comments are inexcusable and the fact that he would even put himself in this position shows just what how unsuitable he is to be Leader of the House. The Leader and the Speaker will have the responsibility of restoring trust in Parliament after the next election and Duncan must have just signed his own death warrant.

Dave, get rid of this tit.

Kerron Cross to join Game Changer?

Having mentioned Alex Hilton and David Prescott's Labour PR company

Game Changer

once tonight already, TB isn't meaning to sound obsessed, but he did happen to clock this little bit of intrigue on the

previously

mentioned

Tom Miller's Twatter feed

:

Kerron Cross

has been kicking around for years but has recently given up his blog with

little or no explanation

... the super-blogger and councillor would sure as hell bring a lot more to the company than Miller ever will.

And with that TB is returning to his rosé.

Tom Miller PPC is a twat - Episide 56

Now TB is aware that it is silly season, but the news that Tom Miller, aka "Mr Smear" aka Gareth, has been selected by the Woking Labour Party to be their candidate really takes the biscuit. If he had a hope in hell of winning then TB would be slightly concerned, but given Miller would have to overturn a

six thousand majority from third place

, it seems Parliament is safe from the greasy pole climbing, bleeding heart joker, for now. No wonder his blog recently disappeared - TB would attempt to hide those quasi-communist rantings that sounded like they came from a stoned fourteen year old in Che t-shirt too.

Frankly after the

interview he gave to LabourList today

, thank goodness this idiot won't be anywhere near power anytime soon. Where to begin?

Miller has taken to the classic Labour backstabbing and bitchiness like a duck to water. In his new role as a PPC he has already called for Purnell and Hazel Blears to be forced out of Parliament (

10:47 am comment

) but then what would you expect? Miller has previous trouble making experience. Lets not forget that Miller was embroiled, at a high level, in what was one of the biggest political scandals of the last twenty years. He was henchman to Derek Draper and has admitted to doing Draper's dirty work, including compiling smear documents and attack memos. When the McBride email scandal forced Draper to surrender the reigns of LabourList, Miller went too, but not without a pay off for his silence. Is this really something that the people of Woking would want in their elected Member of Parliament? Miller could have used his interview with LabourList to atone for his disgusting past behaviour, but instead he decided to treat the whole thing as a joke, claiming: "Good to see that you've managed to run it [LabourList] and rebuild it without receiving any potentially libelous emails. It shouldn't be that difficult really!" This sort of attitude shows that Miller and co just still don't get it. Attempting to deflect the seriousness of the McBride scandal by batting it away with piss poor humour shows just what an amateur and naive young man Miller is - way out of his depth and totally unsuitable to be a candidate.

As one fellow Labour PPC put it when he sent TB the link this morning - "What a wanker."

But it's not as if that is it. The interview is full of other gems. As Dizzy has

pointed out earlier

:

"I've just read quite possibly the funniest thing ever on Labourlist. Tom Miller, the new Labour PPC for Woking has written some of the things he believes in, including this gem (emphasis mine),

"I believe in balanced budgets, but I think the best way to do that is to make sure we come out of recession without having completely devastated our potential to recover. Increased investment and borrowing is needed, because it's a slow rise we need."

Got to love the contradiction there, he believes in balanced budgets and thinks increasing borrowing and spending, sorry "investment", is the way to achieve it?

That's a bit like saying "I believe in vegetarianism, now please pass me a hamburger"."

And where next? How about this charming quote:

"I appreciate that I am (very) young, but the commons is full of rose-cheeked guffawing old men, and few of them know how to make a slippery nipple, or what it feels like to shower stale fag ash out of your hair... Why don't we have any young parliamentarians?"

Well Tom, if you believe that stinking of fags and being able to mix shots qualifies you to be an elected representative of the people then you have probably just answered your own question. Is this kid for real? In one sentence he has probably, single handed, put the case for younger representation in parliament back ten paces. Being able to mix shots (and clearly not hold them if you end up with your head in the ashtray,) is hardly top of the list for qualifications for young parliamentarians. TB doubts Pitt the Younger used the slippery nipple line when arguing why his elders should take him seriously. Did Tom use this line in front of his selection panel?

What a moron.

What next? Well lets have a look at young Gareth's CV shall we? As TB mentioned previously, Miller was one of the henchman at the time of the Draper/McBride scandal. What he fails to mention though is the sympathy job he got with the New Labourish Game Changer PR after he was fired from LabourList. Miller is some sort of

"consultant" with Game Changer

(he is apparently in the Slippery Nipple and Fag Ash Brand Development Department.) Why does he leave this fact out of the interview? Why is he hiding where he works? What's wrong with working in PR?

Odd no?

Like all good rants TB will end with a quote. No TB won't be naff and quote a Kennedy like Miller, but instead will leave this gem from the man himself to gnaw at the back of your head.

"as a socialist, power is in itself an important part of my principles" (10:39 am comment)

Everything else aside, there is the chilling proof that this man should be kept as far away from any semblance of power as possible. There is a glimpse into his inner lefty frame of mind, and it's not a nice view.

Idiot.

Guest Post - I Challenge You To Care

While TB is lying in the sun he will keep one paw on the keyboard every few days as well as putting up the occasional guest post. Ever since the whole Nightjack affair, TB has got into reading a fair few police blogs. Often anonymous and cutting, these bloggers are risking their careers and security by bravely blowing the whistle on the reality of Britain's police forces, that have been bought to near breaking point by failed Labour policies. Here "

PC Ellie Bloggs

" gives a shocking dose of reality:

I probably considered myself fairly liberal before I joined the police. I might even have harboured feelings that criminals are born of circumstance and that people are generally jolly pleasant chaps.

Standing in custody last Friday night, waiting to book in my snarling, swearing, vomiting seventeen-year-old prisoner, it occurred to me that it may only be possible to be a left-wing liberal if you have never experienced the true face of crime. On Friday, there were twenty prisoners already in custody. Nine of them were under eighteen. Twelve of them needed the doctor to prescribe them sedatives, anti-withdrawal drugs or insulin, to prevent them literally dying during their time in custody. Five of them had been violent to the police on arrest, another seven had been abusive. One had never been arrested before. As I entered, an ambulance crew passed me in the other direction muttering something about ‘fakers’. And when it was finally my turn, the prisoner behind me in the queue decided to explode in a frenzy of kicking, urination and swearing, and we all had to drop everything to bundle him forcibly into a cell.

I’d say the collection was a pretty good snapshot of criminality in this country. It is a never-ending parade of drug abuse, alcoholism, untamed testosterone and furious youth. The same faces appear day after day - often literally - and roll round kicking and screaming on the conveyor belt of criminal justice. They neither seek, want nor accept help, and in any event we haven’t got any to give them.

Of course, none of what the police experience of criminals is actually admissible in court. Judges and magistrates see the offender one or two years down the line, dressed in their ‘good’ tracksuit, their lawyers declaring how they haven’t been in trouble at all since the incident. (Apart from the five other cases still pending a court date, your honour.) Stories are bandied around of childhood abandonment, the clutches of heroin, bullies preying on the weak and simple. Nobody, not even the offender, believes any of them. And yet he/she walks free at the end of the day and is back in custody the following weekend.

I do despair when I read yet more news of the government’s plans to keep everyone out of jail and put over half the country through higher education. Why not just cut out the middle man and send convicted criminals straight to university?

I never thought I’d become a hardline traditionalist through joining the police – if anything I care more than ever about human rights and freedoms. But I care more about myself: my family walking down the street at night and my possessions locked in my house and car. The people paraded before me in custody on Friday night would take away those things in a single blink of an eyelid, and forget doing it straight afterwards. All the new laws, new sentences, and new attitudes just aren’t working. Perhaps it’s time to try something old.

If you would like to submit a guest post then get in touch here. Also check out

PC Bloggs

here.

Who is running the country?

After days of speculation TB can confirm it is in fact he, not Mandy, who is running the country by blackberry from his Mediterranean retreat.

Jet Set Bear

Not sure what all that fuss about Terminal 5 was... TB found it very civilised but then again he was running very late and managed to convince the charming BA stewardess to fast track him through everything.

From DC to the south of France.

It's a hard life. Back soon.

When TB met Ann Coulter...

If you happen to be one of those unfortunate people who suffer from a leftist disposition then look away now...How can this picture be beaten? Bush? Cheney? Palin?

Cheers

TB is rather chuffed to have just noticed he has crept up to 11th in the

Wikio Political Blog rankings

which measure influence in the British political blogosphere. TB feels he has been abandoning the blog recently and sadly it's only going to get worse for the next few weeks when he is lying by a pool. Thank you very much to the thousands of you who swing by on a regular basis and normal service will resume eventually.

Got a redesign in the pipeline, a slight expansion, and of course TB's 2nd annual conference bash. Details of all of these will emerge soon so keep reading.

Thanks again!

Western Society Collapses...

So you spend all this time trying to find wifi and then the

internet breaks

:

"Twitter down today? Yup, so of course the social media addicts head on over to Facebook, which is experiencing outages of its own, although fortunately less frequent ones. Mashable staff are experiencing everything from “Network Errors” to a good percentage of pages simply failing to load.

Mashable commenters add that they’re also struggling with Facebook, the likely cause being a flood of Twitter traffic hitting the site."

Oh the irony.

Kodak moment...

Wifi is sporadic but TB is still having a great time out here at the

YAF

conference. A familiar face came along yesterday and gave this barnstorming speech:



Following the speech, the Brits and some selected American friends were whisked to our embassy for a reception.

Was a great evening.

Flying from DC to the south of France on Saturday, but TB has a funny feeling it won't be long before he is back out here...

Exclusive: Newt Gingrich to run for the White House

After a rabble rousing speech to the YAF conference, the former House Speaker was asked whether he had booked any vacation time to visit the states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Massachusetts etc early in 2012. After batting the question away with humour, Gingrich seemed the think twice and with a slight glint in his eye, smiled and said there would be a decision to be made in January 2011.

Cue much enthusiastic applause.

Newt Gingrich's Contract with America delivered a balanced budget and the first tax cut in sixteen years back in the mid nineties. He has the ideas and potential backing and support to redraw the battle lines and throw the gauntlet down to the spend-happy democrats and the floundering Obama administration.

The Republican Party desperately needs a figurehead, a banner to come together under once again. Speaker Gingrich has saved the GOP once and it would be fascinating to watch him try do it again. The invisible primary is already well underway - perhaps the GOP nomination is exactly why a busy man would take time out of his day to talk to hundreds of young activists for a few hours.

He sure has hell didn't deny it.