Hazel Blears must have known what she was writing in that article. ‘Lamentable’ and ‘You Tube if you want to’ are hardly accidental insults.
At PMQs, David Cameron went for Gordon – sensing a weakened and beleaguered Prime Minister – somehow he managed to mess it up and come over like a bully-boy – unpleasant and over-political. Every one of his six supplementries was attacking Brown. So whilst Brown was wooden and unable to make quips – he didn’t suffer the way he ought to have given his fragile state and the week from hell just passed. He was desperately trying to be a serious man for serious times – coming back at Cameron for not asking a single question on policy or the economy. Underwhelming on both sides I thought.
Actually – the duel was deeply depressing. Red / blue, blue / red – same old same old. About time we had a different way of doing politics! Yes – us.
The only really decent questions (apart from Nick Clegg – obviously) was about the Gurkhas and the complete failure of Brown to understand the mood of the nation and somehow believe that rattling immigration bars (no doubt guided by focus group) would somehow trump the hearts and minds of British people. our souls are built on fair play! But Gordon doesn’t get it.
So – we ranged over this in Simon Mayo – and ID cards (waste of money and won’t work), swine flu (briefly thank goodness) and the Gurkhas again – and the demise of Gordon. Doom and Dust!
It’s a great program – and I note that Simon ‘I’m being made to tweet’ Mayo (last time I was on re twittering) now finds it irresistible!
Lynne Featherstone 
From reading this blog I’d say most of Lynne’s politics are basically just as tired, boring, irrelevant and outdated anything Labour or the Conservatives have to offer.There are some excellent Lib dem politicians around but Lynne certainly isn’t one of them. Many of her views and the policies she supports are neither Liberal nor remotely Democratic.It is time for change, but quite frankly I don’t really regard Lynne as part of the “us” who she refers to as the solution.Just look at this blog – each time Lynne has been involved in a controversy (3 main ones I can think of over the last few years – Progesterex, Fire Brigade and stationary), she has behaved absolutely despicably on the first of these, badly on the second and only been anywhere near sensible and honest once.These type of incidents are the true test of a politician and whether they really are different, Lynne has failed that test quite spectacularly on more than one occasion.
Chris Grayling (Tory Shadow Home Secretary) was on BBC R4 Today this morning about ID cards and completely missed the point: they are useless unless they can be securely verified on-line, there is no infrastructure to do that, nor is there any sign that it is planned, and the cards do not carry the necessary security functions to allow such verification to be done from the home or office PC (they need to be turned into eID cards, carrying a digital certificate, as is done in nearby countries). Then they could also carry another certificate for use to digitally sign electronic documents (but that is all too complicated for our Whitehall numpties as well as for the Shadow man, although I think that Meg Hillier is beginning to get it).