European Political News

I am planning to move the Wardman Wire to a different server later this evening.

Service will be intermittent while I am testing the new install.

I suggest visiting www.mattwardman.co.uk, which has most of the same articles (and all of today's parliamentary Reports).

This week legislation was largely forgotten as we all got a vicarious thrill from the surprising sexual antics of Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, Hague and Harman crossed handbags on the issue of which of them was going to come first in Parliament's Best Dressed List, and a Minister learned the hard way that sometimes the best thing to bring to a contentious debate is silence.

Via … er … Labour Home. I’m inclined to agree with Ken on this occasion. Whether it is true or not that he did smash it - I have no idea. Tags: ken livingstone, new labour

The Lib Dems have some more proposals about voting reform over on Lib Dem Voice. On this occasion it is Laurence Boyce proposing "weighted votes". I have an alternative suggestion.

Via Bob Piper's post "Never Mind the Width" I (memo to self: spend an hour a week "wasting time" surfing new blog), I found a new and interesting blog from my area (Dronfield), Three Score Years and Ten - with the excellent tag-line:

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" - Søren Kierkegaard

Harry Barnes was Labour MP for North-East Derbyshire for the years 1987-2005. He writes about local life (especially Sheffield Football Club - the world's oldest club founded in 1857), Iraqi and Iranian events. Here are some posts that I enjoyed reading from the last couple of months. You have to navigate the blog via the archives or search facility, as Harry does not use labels or categories.

During the winter of 2006-007 I lived in Wales for 5 months. Just.

To be exact, 200m on the Welsh side in the village of Llanymynech, in Powys - while I was working in Shropshire.

Llanymynech sits on the A483 a few miles from both the Shropshire town of Oswestry and Welshpool - next door to a village called Pant (I kid you not). Llanymynech means "Church of the Monks" in English. The A483 is one of three major routes between North and South Wales.

It has 12,500 vehicles a day (2001 figure) travelling down the road. And no bypass. Since I lived next to the A483, I knew more about the 12,500 vehicles than about anything else - especially at 7.00am in the morning.

The problem is that this is one bypass which has been mooted, examined, considered, cancelled, delayed, thrown into the long grass, relisted, repromised, reconsidered, residelined ... you get the picture ... since before 1960.

For this week’s Friday Free For All question, we are asking if you have managed to make the news in your town or community, and what you think about it. So: Have you made the local press? Why and what happened? Do you have any tips? (Note: making it into the local press in such a manner that [...]

While he had spent all that time away from Parliament...

...George had lost his ability to "catch the Speaker's eye"..

Inspired by Friday Lolcats meme.

Three Line Whip suggests that politics is becoming personalised again:

It appears that the magnificent Ken Dodd has a gag in his current stage show about the Prime Minister: “Every time I see Gordon Brown on the telly I think: ‘I bought that suit’.”

Welcome to this week's Holyrood Herald. In one sense, this is quite an easy Roundup to put together as there has only been one big story, and it's Scotland's place in the Union. Momentum has been gathering on this matter since before the election: when an SNP-led Government looked like a possibility (around the Summer of 2006, after the Moray By-Election which saw the SNP not only hold the seat but increase their share of the vote, aong with the collapse in the Labour vote in a handful of Council By-Elections), pundits began discussing independence in the most serious terms since the 1970s - even the constitutional discussions of the 1990s centred around devolution.

The state visit of French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his eminently suitable (ahem) wife added a certain je ne sais quios to the usual humdrum of Westminster but, as is often the way with these things, below the glittering surface the grubby underbelly of politics continued to undulate. The Speaker's increasingly desperate attempts to keep the furniture-related spending habits of MPs a secret has elicited criticism from those brave crusaders after truth in the fourth estate, whilst the row over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has led to a somewhat embarrassing climbdown on the part of the Government. In other news, the Conservatives blame Labour for falling marriage rates, and Alistair Darling's ability to enjoy a pint of mild and bitter in the boozer after work has been cutailed by those most feared crusaders for justice and DA TROOF: bloggers.

I have an image of Peter Kilfoyle MP in my mind this morning. He is in the restaurant of a 4 star hotel. His breakfast kipper lies folorn and lonely on his plate, and he has a rather red face due to exertion. He is chasing a waitress round and round the table with a rolled-up newspaper, because she had the temerity to offer him a complimentary copy of the Daily Telegraph - and he's not putting up with that !

While I was digging around looking at jug-of-water-gate, I happened to come across a politics page on the Open Directory showing that the Lib Dems have more UK websites - just under 700 - listed there than either Labour (just under 500) or the Conservative (just under 600). The category is UK Parties and Politics. What gives? Click the image for a screenshot Particularly striking is that 350 Liberal Democrat branch websites are listed, compared with 101 “Local” websites for Labour and 118 Conservative Association websites. I can’t be definitive from just these figures - but it looks as if someone in the Lib Dems knows their Internet Onions, and have been doing some superb strategic internet campaigning, punching a couple categories above their organisational weight. I’ll be explaining some more detail on this in my Blog Platform column tomorrow afternoon, and taking a look at why the Open Directory (and even more so Wikipedia) can be so important, and putting forward some thoughts about online campaigning. I will also be doing a more analytical piece over at Poliblog Perspective looking at how the internet presence of the parties has developed in the Open Directory since the year 2000. In a nutshell, some argue that organisations specifically targetting raising their profile are somehow pushing the boundary, whether by deliberately aiming to be listed on many websites, or by designing a website specifically to do well in search engine results; in my view, it is no different to (for example) having a listing in a County or Professional directory - or sending a press release worded to catch the attention of a newspaper or radio programme. More in Blog Platform tomorrow. Tags: lib dem, conservative, labour, open diectory

Earlier I posted that we were That is confirmed, and we should have our first real Senedd Circular report posted next Thursday. This has now been confirmed, and we will be rolling from next week. You can find out more about Miss Wagstaffe on her blog. Why “Circular”? The official reason is that it is a Newsletter and the Senedd Chamber is circular. You may not believe me, but it has nothing to do with 8.3% pay increases and fatcat (i.e., circular) AMs. Nor does it have anything to do with extra-large AMs after too many political lunches. However, we now have a third reason, and it because of a publicity stunt by Jenny Willott MP (LibDem Welsh Affairs at Westminster) following on from Heather Mills throwing a jug of water over Paul McCartney’s lawyer Fiona Shackleton. Ms Willott responded to BBC correspondent David Cornock’s fishing expedition, after Glyn Davies made a “wet hair” joke. Meanwhile, Glyn Davies told the BBC to take a running jump when they tried to get him on Radio Wales about his blog post. Good call. There are more important things around, such as Tibet / China and the continuing assault on our Civil Liberties (on which I’m happy to acknowledge excellent work by the Lib Dems). (more…)

(Since it is Bank Holiday week) George was trying really hard to seem too big for his boots… …but still he continually needed smaller pairs. Inspired by Friday Thursday Lolcats meme. Tags: george galloway mp, respect, bethnal green, stop the war[tags] george galloway mp, respect, bethnal green, stop the war[/tags]

With the Parliamentary spectacle of the Budget behind us, this week politics descended into navel gazing and - occasionally - farce. An outbreak of jealous bitchslapping at Downing Street in the wake of the departure of former Brown aide Spencer Livermore coincided with a sharp dip in the polls for the comrades. Smooth. Meanwhile, details of the Liberal Democrats preparedness for Government leaked out causing speculation on the blogosphere of an alternative SNP-Conservative Unholy Alliance after the next general election, the Gord got down with Doctor Who, and a Conservative Opposition Day Motion on Post Office closures came close to causing red faces on the Labour benches. (more…)

Welcome to the second Holyrood Herald. This week: Plans to give different MSPs different expense rules cause a stooshie The SNP is still being nice to Councillors Why Alex Salmond has a better figure than Wendy Alexander And what have MSPs done to annoy Jack Vettriano? More on Holyrood expense rules Last week, the Holyrood Herald flagged up the rule on Holyrood expense rules, and proposals to change them. The most controversial aspect of the plan involved giving Constituency MSPs more money to hire staff than their Regional counterparts. Former Tory MSP James Douglas-Hamilton, who took part in the review, has dissented from the proposals, arguing that too little evidence was collected beforehand and that this would widen an already unfortunate gap between the 73 MSPs elected by First Past the Post and the 56 elected on Regional lists. SNP MSP Christine Grahame agrees, arguing that it was unfair to measure a Regional MSP (in a region where his party only got 15% of the vote) who had only been elected in May against one constituency MSP who had been in her post since 1999, along with another who’d held the Holyrood seat since then AND been a Westminster MP from 1987 to 2001, after having been one of the SNP’s ‘First Eleven’ MPs in the 1970s. To really stir things up, Parliamentary researchers have themselves intervened, with staffers from all parties (and one working for an Independent MSP) have joined together in protest at the plans. The Council-Government love-in continues Elsewhere, the Government has announced its intention to give local Councillors (who, as we noticed last week, are getting friendly with the SNP) an extra year in office. This comes as part of plans to ‘de-couple’ the Scottish and Local Elections, whose combined polling day caused a lot of organisational headaches in last year’s vote. After the combination of a new-look ballot paper for Holyrood and a new voting system for Councillors conspired with other factors to cause chaos on Election night, the SNP announced that they intended to separate the two polls, and Parliamentary Business Minister Bruce Crawford confirmed the Government’s intentions on Sunday. Councillors will, if the plan goes ahead, not face the electorate until 2012. Wendy Alexander has a rubbish figure Meanwhile an opinion poll gives Alex Salmond an approval rating of +53%, while Wendy Alexander is saddled with a score of -22%. The forthcoming Scottish Labour Conference at Aviemore won’t be a barrel of laughs, I suspect. Antagonising artists And finally, artist Jack Vettriano has taken the huff at suggestions that MSPs might want to borrow his paintings. He wants them to buy his works instead. Clearly neither side in this argument has heard of that stereotype of the Scots at a tight-fisted people. If they have, they’re trying to live down to it. (more…)

This is not just irony; this is savage on a Jonathon Swift baby-eater scale. The tragedy is that - to borrow a phrase likely to be in Mr Blair’s seminar - they know not what they do. I think that Mr Blair is the greatest liar and sender of our armed forces into action under false pretences that this country has seen for perhaps 50 years. And Yale University invite him to teach about “channelling religious values towards reconciliation not polarisation”. Ye gods. It says all we need to know that the photo on the right (courtesy Yale Press Office) is labelled “Tony Blair PR”. Yep, right in the filename; that about sums him up. Anyway - for what it’s worth (if anything) Yale is now permanently on my “institutions not to touch with a bargepole” list. If you want to know any more, the press release is here. Tags: tony blair, yale university

I’ve solved this problem. Let us make them follow the precedent of the Ministerial Code of Practice (pdf) introduced by the Blair-Brown government. And the ultimate authority for deciding whether the blogger broke the code should - following this Ministerial precedent - be the blogger themselves. And for any breach, an apology should suffice as remedy. Sorted. That’ll keep our Civil Service Ethical and Sleaze Free. Tags: gordon brown, tony blair, civil serf, ministerial code of ethics, guidelines for ministers, sleaze Previous in series

A refreshing admission by Simon Dickson: OK, Im an idiot. The lengthy and fair-minded piece I wrote this morning about a speech by Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne at the RSA was a year late. Osborne made some interesting points about the need to recast the political settlement for the digital age. And now today, theres an email doing the rounds (see Nick Booths piece) pointing out similarities between this 2007 speech and the one made by Tom Watson on Monday. Amusingly, it condemns the Watson speech as a mashup. But hold on. Surely its entirely in keeping with the whole ethos of open source, to take good ideas and build on them? Didnt you say mass collaboration was a good thing? Kudos up one notch for the Puffbox Man. He makes some good points about Open Source Politics. I made a few similar points in my reaction to Mr Gordon’s 2007 Budget Speech, using splogs as a metaphor: I suppose that all political speeches should in fact be called SPLEECHES since they all follow at least some of the principles behind Spam Blogs, i.e.: 1. Get content from somewhere else. 2. Use it for your own benefit. 3. Do not attribute the source. 4. With the overall objective of promoting your own organisation. That would be 4 out of 4 then for 90% of policy speeches I have ever heard ! Tags: budget speech, splog, simon dixon, puffbox, open source politics

This is the “John Lewis list” of claims MPs can make. I’m not saying anything because I’m shocked into silence by the idea floating around that the way to deal with a dodgy expenses system with insufficient supervision is to shovel it into the basic salary where there will be no supervision whatsoever. New kitchen - �10,000 New bathroom - �6,335 Suite of furniture - �2,000 Bed - �1,000 Sideboard - �795 Television set - �750 Hi-fi/stereo - �750 Wardrobe - �700 Gas cooker - �650 Dining table - �600 Fridge/freezer combi - �550 Bookcase/cabinet - �500 Drawer chest (5) - �500 Dressing table - �500 Washer dryer - �500 Dishwasher - �375 Washing machine - �350 Rugs - �300 Free-standing mirror - �300 Air conditioning - �299.99 Recordable DVD - �270 Tumble dryer - �250 Coffee table - �250 Food mixer - �200 Book case/shelf - �200 Nest of tables - �200 Lamp table - �200 Dining armchairs - �150 each Workstation - �150 Coffee maker/machine - �100 Bedside cabinet - �100 Dining chairs - �90 each Shredder - �50 Carpets (sq m) - �35 Underlay (sq m) - �6.99 Carpet fitting (sq m) - �6.50   Tags: mp expenses, john lewis list  

Roll up, roll up! See the Eighth Wonder of the Parliamentary Estate: the amazing Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling ventriloquism act. SEE! Alistair deliver his first Budget as Chancellor! GASP! At the way that way his lips move so convincingly as he mouths stuff about “stability” and more tax on The Booze (cries of “shame” from students everywhere)! MARVEL! At the…yeah, that’s enough. Yep, it’s Budget time people, and frankly after the incident and romance surrounding the culmination of the Lisbon Treaty in the Commons last week, I’m surprised we can all cope with the excitement. Elsewhere, wee Nicky Clegg delivered his first address to the assembled Liberal Democrat masses at their spring Conference, the Speaker was on the receiving end of a bout of happy-slapping from a former member of staff, the polls indicate that the Tories shouldn’t start getting complacent yet, and a Conservative MP threw a hissy fit and resigned the whip. (more…)

Via Twitter: Mick Fealty of Slugger O’Toole and Brassneck is going to Twitter the key points from the budget speech tomorrow, starting at 12:30pm. As he puts it (in 140 characters or less): I’m planning to twitter the UK budget from 12.30 tomorrow… then do a wrap on Brassneck. You can sign up to receive the updates here by following Mick’s twitter channel, but you may first need to get a Twitter account at the Twitter website home page. Tags: twitter, mick fealty, brassneck

The blogger Civil Serf first mentioned (to my knowledge) by Dizzy a couple of weeks ago is - according to Ellee Seymour - to be covered on Newsnight this evening. I got this via Twitter: More than 800 hits today thanks to civil servant post, the story is on newsnight tonight, michael crick has tried to find her. (That’s one thing it’s for, Mr Devil.) If you’ve been incommunicado for the last 36 hours, Ellee said yesterday: A civil servant who wrote an unflinching blog where she described her working life, the incompetences and inadequacies she regularly encountered, could now be in very hot water for publishing her views. The Civil Serf blog now seems to have been removed after it was highlighted in todays Sunday Times, with the headline: “Hunt is on for demon blogger of Whitehall,” while the Sunday Telegraph reported: “Blogger lifts lid on Whitehall failings”. Her blog is easy enough to find, and the Times even has a link to it. But the site shows an error message saying the page does not exist. Its obviously been pulled. Ellee’s article includes some quotes. It is snarky and - in my view - must surely be too close to the bone not to be a breach of contract. I stand by the comments I made on Ellee’s post on Sunday (edited slightly): I gave her six months when I first saw it. I think that civil servants cannot write critical blogs without being in violation of their contract (conduct bringing employer info disrepute etc.). If they do so, they must be bulletproof in their anonymity. Pulled on a Sunday implies that she may have pulled it herself. It is a dangerous game to play - especially in the political niche. Its always a tricky one - if you plan to avoid work in your writing they could still say no if you ask. I have to decide whether to blog about clients, and it somethgin I have thought quite carefully about, and I still dont know if I got the balance right. (Note: my policy is not to blog about current employers, and never to break a contract or confidentiality agreement - criminal activity notwithstanding). At this point it looks as though Civil Serf pulled her own blog, so she may get away with it. Tags: civil serf, anonymous blogging, dooced, blog about employer

The site for the 18 Doughty Street online TV station is off the internet. I had expected the site to be preserved as an archive, but as the Feral Pigeonnotes: Am I the only one to notice that 18 Doughty Street has totally disappeared? Iain Dale told us it was going to get bigger and better. They even had a wordy statement on the website before it too went bye-bye. Where did it go? I was trying to find a show from last year that talked about Recess Monkey posting prematurely on the death of Margaret Thatcher, which later turned out to be a trick played on the editor of the left-wing blog. How can a TV station just disappear like that? I think it’s a mistake to let the site go off the air - the archive site that was left was doing a good job in preserving access to the output of an experiment that produced some quite significant material. To my thinking, the best material of all were the extended interviews with politicians, and some of the more idiosyncratic voices that had a real platform for the first time. Fortunately some of the archive is preserved, so I will post a daily video from the collection until I run out of material that I think will be of continued interest. They may be in popup windows, however, as I think the videos are wider than my blog template would permit. We’ll see. [Edit: I have softened my comment in this post slightly - without changing my sentiment.] Tags: feralpigeons, 18 doughty street, mike rouse

This week it’s all about the Lisbon Treaty, folks. I know, I know, but before I precipitate the kind of mass exodus that can only be engendered by the words “long debate on Europe,” consider this: nothing in politics reignites flagging interest like a good ol’ fashioned split and, this time it’s not the Tories. We’re through the looking glass here, people. In other news, the theme of “booze Britain” was given a new lease of life with the release of the interim report on the new licensing laws, Margaret Hodge’s comments on the Proms allowed hacks everywhere to crank out the phrase “political correctness gawn maaaaaaad” or variants thereof, David Cameron and his Merry Men got all chain gang on the Government in terms of prison policy, and a Labour backbencher attempted to hold John Humphrys to account over his questioning of Opposition spokesmen. Good luck with that one, love. (more…)

THIS IS AN EXCERPT (more…)

On Thursday this week we’ll be starting a multi-Parliamentary roundup from multiple personalities in multiple Parliaments. Sadie Smith of Sadie’s Tavern did a trial run around Westminster. Here is the summary; the full report is over at the Tavern. (On a sidenote, we are still thinking about names for reports. Suggestions are welcome in the comments). Westminster Watch 25/2 - 3/3 It’s been a week of contrasts and thinly veiled class warfare here at Westminster. Revelations in last week’s Sundays that Commons Speaker Michael Martin had snaffled a cool ?17,000 of expenses last year to pay a mortgage on a house he already owns has divided opinion amongst MPs, the press, and bloggers alike. In the red corner the Martin cheerleaders are muttering how this is all an eeeevil campaign perpetrated by a bunch of Eton hoorays in the media and in Parliament who want to remind the proletariat of their place; in the blue corner his detractors are trumpeting that this is an outrageous misuse of public funds for which he should resign (even if he weren’t a bit crap). Meanwhile, at least one potential contender for the Speaker post - should Martin, entirely by his own choice you understand, fall on his sword - has been practising his Elder Statesman routine in front of anyone who can’t manage to run away fast enough. News from Elsewhere The bowel-clenching tedium of the debate on the Lisbon Treaty was unexpectedly enlivened by some we-shall-not-be-moved action from the Liberal Democrats. A protest on the roof of the Commons led to the arrest of a Parliamentary bag-carrier. And the Gord got down wiv da kidz at the Labour Party’s Spring Conference in Birmingham. Wicked, innit? Read it all. Tags: westminster watch, sadie smith, michael martin, mr speaker

Garbo is away for a fortnight and Dave Cole is writing the Politics Decoded column as a Guest Author for these two weeks. Dave blogs at davecole.org. In this first column Dave puts forward some ideas about the situation in Kosovo and Serbia. What to do in Kosovo and Serbia? An unusual alignment is taking place in the Balkans at the moment; it is one that means that we must support Kosovo and Serbia going forward. Serbia’s opposition to Kosovo’s independence is based on the idea that Kosovo is the birthplace of Serbs and an integral part of the Serbian state. The latter part is dubious - it was a unit of federation in the former Yugoslavia - and the former idea would make either central Germany or Troy the birthplace of Londoners. However, as we well know, mythologies have a surprising strength. European identity The undertone in Serbia’s assertion of suzerainty over Kosovo is similar to one being played out here, in the UK. This undertone follows on from the comments made by Dr Rowan Williams about sharia in the UK and ultimately comes down to a simple question: is Europe Christian? History has tripped over Serbia from both sides The Battle of Kosovo - way back in 1389 - saw an alliance of Serb lords being thumped by the Ottomans. The key point is that it was an alliance of Serb lords against a common enemy, and it was the first time that had happened. Serbia became a bastion of resistance to the Ottomans and, by implication, of Christian Europe against the Muslim East. Albanians, however, can make a similar claim; Skenderbeg, the national hero, successfully held the Ottomans at bay for a couple of decades. We now see a reversal, of sorts. Serbia is being supported most strongly by Russia. While Christian, Russia seems increasingly distant from modern, liberal, democratic Europe. (more…)

Hopefully to everyone - since this article is to introduce a whole new set of political websites and RSS Feeds that I have been working on since before Christmas. I have also added them all as a toolbar to all the sites. The most significant additions are websites and RSS feeds for blogging members from: The Westminster Parliament The Welsh Assembly The Scottish Parliament The European Parliament As far as I am aware, these feeds are not available from elsewhere - at least with such memorable addresses (see below). Niche Blog Aggregators I’ve been developing niche aggregators since last year, and I’ve now added a toolbar to a number of sites above. I explained my ethos in full here. Briefly, I only use the Excerpt from each article and link directly to the sites concerned - to drive traffic to each blogger’s website rather than keep visitors on the aggregator, and build a combined RSS feed from each website. List of Websites Here’s the full list of websites included in the toolbar above. The Wardman Wire - Matt Wardman on Politics, News and Culture Poliblog Perspective - The Nuts and Bolts of Political Blogging Daily Roundup by Matt Wardman - Matt Wardmans Daily Roundup of News and Comment in the British Media English Political Comment Aggregated - Political Comment from English Bloggers Euro Political Comment Aggregated - Political Comment from Euro Bloggers Irish Political Comment Aggregated - Political Comment from Irish Bloggers Scottish Political Comment Aggregated - Political Comment from Scottish Bloggers Welsh Political Comment Aggregated - Political Comment from Welsh Bloggers Comment from Westminster MPs Aggregated - Comment from Westminster MPs Comment from Senedd AMs Aggregated - Comment from Senedd Ams Comment from Holyrood MSPs Aggregated - Comment from Holyrood MSPs Comment from Brussels MEPs Aggregated - Comment from Brussels MEPs Feed Addresses This is a full list of the 12 feed addresses. http://feeds.feedburner.com/mattwardman http://feeds.feedburner.com/poliblogperspective http://feeds.feedburner.com/dailyroundup http://feeds.feedburner.com/politics-england http://feeds.feedburner.com/politics-europe http://feeds.feedburner.com/politics-ireland http://feeds.feedburner.com/politics-scotland http://feeds.feedburner.com/politics-wales http://feeds.feedburner.com/uk-parliament http://feeds.feedburner.com/senedd http://feeds.feedburner.com/holyrood http://feeds.feedburner.com/europarl OPML File You can get it as an opml file here. This was exported from Feeddemon, so it should be compatible with most RSS readers. Put me in / Take me out Email “mattwardman [at] gmail [dot] com”, and I will consider adding you to the relevant aggregator. The only tricky one will be the English Aggregator, as there are a large number of English Political blogs. If you want your personal blog removed from any aggregator, then I will do so without question for private individuals. I will need more persuasion to remove Elected Officers, as I think inclusion is a matter of public interest; I also stuggle with the concept of any Member of Parliament wanting less publicity. I may also get slightly grumpy with anyone who calls a stream of weekly press releases a “blog” ! Wrapping Up If you know of any Members of Assemblies or Parliaments who I have missed, please drop me an email and I will add them. Please also do so with any bugs you discover. I have not developed a site for the Stormont Assembly, as I do not know of any members there who maintain blogs. There’s some tuning to do with these sites on content, but they should be quite stable. I hope they are useful - especially in saving some time for bloggers keeping up to date. Tags: matt wardman, blog aggregator, senedd, holyrood assembly, scotland, wales, england, house of commons, europe, brussels, ireland, politics, current affairs