Thursday, September 18, 2008

Labour meltdown continues, latest poll is dire!

The latest Ipsos Mori poll in today's Telegraph is dire news for Labour.

It reports the shares as follows; Conservatives 52% (+4), Labour 24% (NC) and the Liberal Democrats on 12% (-5).

On this basis the Conservatives would win 481 seats, and give them an overall majority of 312. This would be a landslide of staggering proportions.

Ouch.

Political betting also has this.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Labour meltdown

It is at times like this you do have to wonder, as a spectator, if it can get any worse.

We have ever increasing calls for a Labour leadership contest, and much gnashing of teeth. Curiously this has bumped the Liberal Democrat conference of the news agenda a bit which is bad manners, bu then they don't have much to say of significance anyway.

The big question has to be; Will there be a Labour party in 2015?

The answer is of course yes, as the Liberals suffered a massive prolonged wipe out and have to some extent made a bit of a comeback. The lesson here is not that Labour will be here for ever, just that it takes a long time to wipe out a party, for the Labour party has never delivered its promises to its base and now has alienated its base with its current message and awful leadership.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

September the 11th anniversary.

Well, we are 7 years on from the 11th of September 2001.

I remember popping next door to the TV shop and watching the second plane hit on many TV screens.

It was so hard to take in.

Doubly so as I watched the towers collapse.

May they rest in peace.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Do the BBC hate the disabled?

I am growing increasingly incensed at how much it seems the BBC do not care for the disabled.

The coverage of the Paralymics is derisory.

I have just watched the sport report on BBC News 24.

The lead item was very brief, Lance Armstrong making a comeback.

Then football news.

Then the very briefest mention that we may have a passing interest in an event involving some cripples.

Well, cheers. F*cking cheers you useless mindless bunch of ignorant left wing useless w*nkers.

I, and several other able bodied friends are actually quite interested in the paralympics, our team our doing us proud thank you very much though they would be doing very well to beat their performance last time, when they came second in the medal table.

I mean, for pities sake, we have a one legged cyclist who's record beats the Los Angeles Olympic record of 1984, and is but 5 seconds behind Chris Hoy's record. I would love to be able to tell you his name, but alas it is not clear on the BBC's website, nor is that fact noted there that I could find.

The medals table is not there in an updated form either.

Mind you, the BBC has form for hating the disabled. You may recall the other day seeing a blind correspondent. He stuck in my mind because I had never seen one on TV before. He was not the best looking of people, and his obvious all white eyes were striking, but then so what? The BBC has plenty of not that good looking male reporters, (though now I come to think of it, not that many not so good looking women ones, are they sexist as well?) who cares if he is blind? His name was Gary O'Donoghue. His report seemed fair enough.

Well according to Private Eye, and indeed his wikipedia entry he was the man on the scene about to break the news of the political fallout over foot and mouth last year. He is after all an experienced political correspondent and was the on duty man at the time.

So there he was about to broadcast to the nation on the Friday night 10 o'clock news, a blind man, and as an observation, the first one to do so that I can recall, when, according to both Private Eye and Wikipedia, an hour before he was due on air the deputy editor, Daniel Pearl decided he did not want a cripple on TV.

The BBC has had to pay lots of money for that, as they were sued. Daniel Pearl looks set for promotion.

So there you have it. The BBC promotes those who discriminate against the disabled, and treats the paralympics as so second class it can't be arsed to give it air time, outside its good coverage on BBC2 for 1 hour in the evenings. (The Olympics had the same but on BBC1).

This is wrong. So very very wrong.

And whilst I am at it, I listen to the very good correspondent Peter White on BBC Radio 4, why don't we see him on TV?

Monday, September 08, 2008

Is the economy about to turn the corner?

Well, there is good news about, or at least better than the utterly dire news we have been getting.

The US government has effectively taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who cover half the US mortgage market. Although leaving shareholders severely out of pocket, it seems the US government is going to make mortgage cash available helping the US housing market.

Markets around the world have reacted positively to this news. Had either or both of those institutions collapsed things would have been very grim indeed.

Also oil is down, as are raw materials prices leading to lower output figures.

Make no mistake, it will take quite a while for confidence to return to the market, but we may now be moving along the bottom and up again, in terms of confidence.

The BBC has this on the US and this on factory output prices.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Kevin Keegan not resigned or sacked shocker!

The whole world of journalism was thrown into turmoil last night after it emerged that Kevin Keegan had not been sacked and had not resigned.

Several journalists who had banked on a good lunch by making something out of nothing were completely dumbfounded.

One journalist who did not wish to be made said:
I don't know what's going on! We spend years talking to people, then take one unguarded comment completely out of context, misquote it, make a story and ruin someones life, sells lots of news papers and so on, but this time, it seems not to have worked. I am shocked!
Another older and wiser journalist intervened saying:
Yes, but if we keep this rubbish up long enough, and tell each side lies about each other, you never know what might happen. There are legs on this story yet.

So there we are then. A story journalists have made.... or what?

The BBC has this.

PS sorry for not posting for a while.