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Showing posts with label UK politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
As the News of the World coverup starts to crumble, with fresh revelations of old letters (including two versions of one letter, with NOW issuing one letter with references to senior managers redacted), a well-known face on CNN seems to have his own explaining to do.
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| Contemplative Piers Morgan |
Piers Morgan has been accused of countenancing the hacking of phones by third parties who supplied the results to UK newspapers. The BBC has a good summary of the charges and facts.
At one time Morgan had this to say:
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MOREMeanwhile, Roy Greenslade's Guardian blog refers to a report published in GQ magazine in February, detailing an interview Mr Morgan conducted with Naomi Campbell where the supermodel began asking him questions.When she asked if he allowed phone tapping while editor of the News of the World, he replied that he was editor before mobiles were widely used and hacking into voicemails known about.However, he spoke about the jailing of former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman for phone hacking.
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
The Murdochs: It's often the cover up that gets you - just ask Tricky Dick
0 comments Posted by 2011 at 08:57Murdoch Senior and Junior (and PM David Cameron) are in for a few sleepless nights now that this has happened:
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| Cameron and Coulson |
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MOREPhone hacking was widely discussed at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World, according to a reporter who was blamed as the sole culprit, contradicting repeated denials by senior executives and dragging Britain's prime minister back into the scandal.In a letter written four years ago in an appeal against his dismissal from the tabloid, former royal reporter Clive Goodman said the practice of hacking was openly discussed until the then editor Andy Coulson banned open talk about it.
Saturday, 30 April 2011
Where is Quebec leading Canada to on May 2? And why will most Canadians want to undertake that journey with them?
First the coalition, then the Royal Wedding – is the Brit example influencing Canadian voters?
The excitement of the high drama in the UK after their recent election, with negotiations between the three parties ending in a five-year coalition deal between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, spilled over into Canada for a brief time, with bloggers and commentators wading in with comparisons to our
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Monday, 27 December 2010
The False Choice: Voters should choose only the Liberals or the Tories
0 comments Posted by 2011 at 17:21
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says that if an election is called in the coming months, his party is the only true alternative to the Conservatives.
In an interview with CTV's Question Period, Ignatieff says that a vote for Jack Layton's NDP or Gilles Duceppes' Bloc Quebecois is essentially a vote for another Conservative government.
"What I'm saying is, it's time for Canadians to make a choice between two governing parties," Ignatieff said.
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Tuesday, 14 December 2010
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| Ed Miliband contemplating his brand |
Much speculation in the UK about the ability of the new Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, to carve out a reputation as the right man to lead the party back into power.
Take this comment in one blog about the need to pay attention to a new leader's "brand":
Ed appears to have only focused on the vision-thingy, forgetting the need to define his brand in the process. What is the likely punishment for this sort of cardinal sin? The Spectator’s Matthew d’Anocona came to the logical conclusion some weeks ago when he wrote about the threat of “being defined by others”. At this moment in time, Ed Miliband is best known for having disemboweled his brother on the party conference floor at September’s leadership election.
Ouch! That has got to hurt.
Friday, 10 December 2010
The coalition government in Britain is proceeding with legislation to dramatically change the House of Lords. Out go some 800 doddering nobles; in come 300 Lords.
But the real change is that the 300 new lords will be elected by a system of proportional representation:
Crucially, elections to a new senate would take place using proportional representation, the electoral system long favoured by the Lib Dems.
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Thursday, 9 December 2010
Despite being backed by a good majority of her caucus, James was forced out by a palace coup mounted by a small number of NDP members who, according to James, did not like her trying to move the NDP closer to the mainstream of politics:
NDP leader Carole James says she was pushed out by backroom party boys who didn't like her cosying up to business.
James said Tuesday that behind the scenes party brokers such as Bob Williams and Bill Tieleman were actively working to remove her because she was taking the party to the right and extending an olive branch to big business -- the long-sworn enemy of the NDP, the longtime party of unions and workers.
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Monday, 26 July 2010
Speculation that there will be some sort of Tory-Lib Dem pact in 2015 has been growing for several weeks, with Michael Portillo recently suggesting that the two parties should fight the next election under the banner of "the coalition".LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
Now, in a fascinating post on ConservativeHome, Tory MP Mark Field has said that his party is almost certain to give "most Liberal Democrat incumbents" a free run in their seats, with the Lib Dems reciprocating by not standing against the most vulnerable Conservative MPs. Field may only be one MP but his piece could be indicative of thinking elsewhere in the party.
Thursday, 17 June 2010
In today's Globe & Mail, Jeffrey Simpson makes a fundamental error by framing the choices facing Liberals as being one in three:
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MORELiberals have three options. They can fight among themselves, as they have been doing. They can dump their leader, Michael Ignatieff, by means not yet identified, on the necessarily unproven assumption that anyone would be better. Or they can shut up and work together, making the best of what they have.What Liberals cannot do, and would be crazy to contemplate, is a merger with the New Democratic Party.
Friday, 11 June 2010
And that strategy is an election ceasefire, adopted by ordinary Canadians. This – if done by enough of us – is the death knell of Harper's new Tories.
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Perhaps Harper is right: A Coalition of Losers will not pass muster ...
0 comments Posted by 2011 at 12:45... with the voters.
Harper is clearly wrong with his facile assumption that a party which wins more seats than any other party in the House is the winning party and deserves to govern. His statement shows his ignorance or deliberate disregard for our parliamentary conventions. As the Prime Minister, he has the right under our conventions to try to put together a government that will gain the confidence of the House.
This means that he gets first crack to talk to other parties if he wants to cobble together some form of governing agreement with one or more parties (including the Bloc, whose MPs are legally and morally entitled to sit in our parliament, and to participate or not participate in governing our country). Gordon Brown had this right, as members of his party stated after the election resulted in a hung parliament.
Angus Reid: Ignatieff out of step with majority of Liberals on coalition aspect
0 comments Posted by 2011 at 11:03Michael Ignatieff is to be commended for taking firm grasp of the coalition nettle, and refusing to let PM Harper frame coalition governments in Canada as illegitimate. During his recent visit to London, Harper seized on the opportunity to once again make public announcements about Canadian parliamentary conventions which are false, and not appropriate for a prime minister of a Westminster style democracy to make.
Harper's Three Frames
Harper has used three points in his (and his party's) framing of the biggest threat to a Conservative minority government after the next election.
Harper Frame 1: Losers don't get to govern
First, he has picked up on the framing used in Britain after the hung parliament was elected, that a coalition between the Labour Party and the Liberal-Democrats would be a "coalition of losers", and – in typical Harper fashion – put a false twist on the parliamentary convention by claiming that winners get to govern, and not losers:
Saturday, 5 June 2010
Kudos to RobSilver for laying out this stunning snippet of information gleaned from the bowels of the latest Angus Reid poll on coalitioning:
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MOREWhen the results are compared to voting intent, "merging" the Liberals and NDP is supported by a majority of Liberals (54 per cent), materially more popular than among NDP supporters (40 per cent support) (to put this number in perspective, when Angus Reid last asked about such a scenario in October of 2009, they got 43 per cent of Liberals in favour, and 50 per cent opposed); an even larger majority of Liberals (57 per cent) are in favour of "strategic candidate support" between the NDP and Liberals (compared to 44 per cent support amongst NDP supporters). Both parties are equally enthusiastic about a "shared power" scenario (72 per cent LIB, 70 per cent NDP).
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Angus Reid are to be congratulated for departing from the usual Who Ya Gonna Vote For? analysis by exploring the attraction of a coalition under the leadership of one of three men: Ignatieff, Rae and Layton.
Before we dive into the results, a few cautions.
The poll results we have from Angus Reid do not show that voters were asked supplementary questions, which could well have influenced the preferences of respondents.
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Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Canadian coalition calculus: Why Stephen Harper will be prime minister for the next decade
0 comments Posted by 2011 at 10:39
The most important is that – given business as usual by the opposition parties – Stephen Harper is highly likely to be prime minister of Canada for at least the next decade, and possibly longer.
This result is probable given the irresistable force of our elecoral politics.
There are only three situations where this irresistable force meets an immoveable object, and could be deflected from a decade of Prime Minister Harper.
Monday, 24 May 2010
It seems so, if this Lord is to be believed:
It seems only fair that the Conservatives having almost won the election should have more peers than Labour who thoroughly lost it. But surely that does not require anything like another hundred.
I can think of only three reasons why the Government’s business managers might feel that they need such a large infusion of peers loyal to the Coalition. One is that they do not trust the Lib Dem peers to support the coalition in difficult and perhaps unpopular decisions.
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MOREThe second is that they do not trust Conservative peers to vote for measures which were not in the Conservative manifesto, or indeed for all those measures from the Lib Dem manifesto which are now coalition policy.
Want proof? Consider this:
Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hébert said on last week's The National's At Issue show that former prime minister Jean Chrétien and former NDP leader Ed Broadbent are having coalition discussions.
The signs are everywhere – from bloggers to journalists to commentators on television. 
The example of the three British parties actually accepting that our Parliamentary conventions not only allow but expect coalitions to enable a government to actually be able to function in the House has been an eye-opener for many Canadians, whose knowledge of the place of coalitions in our governing process was unfortunately skewed by Harper's deliberate campaign of misinformation and deceit a short while ago.
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The example of the three British parties actually accepting that our Parliamentary conventions not only allow but expect coalitions to enable a government to actually be able to function in the House has been an eye-opener for many Canadians, whose knowledge of the place of coalitions in our governing process was unfortunately skewed by Harper's deliberate campaign of misinformation and deceit a short while ago.
Saturday, 22 May 2010
The Government believes that we need to throw open the doors of public bodies, to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account. We also recognise that this will help to deliver better value for money in public spending, and help us achieve our aim of cutting the record deficit. Setting government data free will bring significant economic benefits by enabling businesses and non-profit organisations to build innovative applications and websites.
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We will bring forward the proposals of the Wright Committee for reform to the House of Commons in full – starting with the proposed committee for management of backbench business. A House Business Committee, to consider government business, will be established by the third year of the Parliament.
For those interested in parliamentary reform in Canada, there is a lot of meat in the Wright Committee proposals for reforming the UK parliament.
Ignatieff, if he gives more than a passing glance to Andrew Coyne's suggesting that he differentiate the Liberal Party from Harper's Tories by having a strong plank of political and electoral reform in the LPC's policies, should take a gander at the Wright Committee Report.
The report starts with this wonderful quote of the mood of the British electorate:
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MOREThe public are sullen, some even mutinous.(Sir Robert Worcester, June 2009)
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Let's map out the battlefield.
On the left, favouring limited regulation of hedge funds and derivatives, we see the forces of Britain (London is home to 80% of the hedge funds) and the USA (where the contributions to Representatives and Senators of the financial industry gives that industry a much greater say than happens in Europe).
On the right, we find the European Union.
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