A Touch Of The Blair's

Watching the Milliband speech today, two things struck me.

Firstly, Milliband, despite claiming to be his own man has touches of both his immediate predecessors of him.  He delivered his speech in a kind of Blairesque fashion, all tactical pauses and hand gestures.  Think of those thumb grasps that Blair used to do all the time and you get the picture.  Oh, and like Brown, Milliband is useless at telling gags – no concept of timing at all.

Turning Around The Milliband Drift

While the Lib Dem’s last week coped with their position in the eyes of the electorate of being Tory human shields by… er… ignoring the problem, this week Labour face a not too dissimilar problem in that they have a negative public image of their party to deal with.

The Rise of TINA

Came across this rather interesting post yesterday about TINA from the excellent documentry maker Adam Curtis (he of the excelent "The Power of Nightmares" and more recently "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace"). It is about the rise of think tanks and how while choice is at the heart of political policymakers, in reality there is no choice...

(Hat-tip: Tax Research UK blog)

A Post About The MacBlogosphere

Sorry about the blogging hiatus, been busy over the past couple of weeks...

Firstly can I say that the news about the closure of both Planet Politics and the Will Patterson Notebook is not really welcome news in the Macbloggosphere.  To lose two insightful and interesting bloggers is a sad loss to the Macbloggosphere.

Secondly, both of those blogs touched on the Total Politics annual poll (which I had missed).  I wasn't expecting an appearance for this blog in the list (I think my misbehaving hard drive put paid to that!).  Even so, a couple of the results were slightly perplexing, and the whole polling process seems like, ah what's the phrase...  a quick and dirty exercise.  The culling of the Scottish list to 25 (from 50 last year) also seems unsatisfactory considering the "cottage industry" nature of the Macbloggosphere.  Still, that shouldn't detract from the sucesses of the MacBlogosphere,hearty congratulations to those at Better Nation towers for making the top ten on the Left Wing blogs list.

All in all, an unsatisfactory couple of days for the Macblogosphere.

The Referendum & Where It Can Be Lost

In the aftermath of the Scottish Election, commentators were beginning to hedge their bets on the outcome of the likely Independence referendum.  Despite the polling evidence still showing a majority against Independence, commentators were now saying that Salmond could pull of a referendum win.  In the 17 weeks since polling, despite the talk about Independence in the media and the Macblogosphere, the SNP have not seriously began to tackle the issues that will lead to a yes vote.  This leads me to think that at the moment, the referendum will either result in a No vote, or will not take place at all.

The Crisis that Hasn't Gone Away

We like justice, justice is good.  Yet the sentences being handed out to the rioters do not sit right.  Feel free to throw the book at them, though I don’t think putting people behind bar’s is enough of a punishment.  No, the real problem with the sentences is that whatever the government says and thinks, whatever right wing commentators say, the rioters are being picked out and picked on.