Whilst the Government proceeds with its plans to further rig the trial process against (almost exclusively male) defendants in cases involving rape and serious sexual offences, the press continues to report cases where false allegations involving such offences have been made.

The Times reported two cases yesterday (28^th April 2006.) One case involved a male who was framed by his girlfriend  (and her mother) after he had sought to bring their relationship to an end. The mother and daughter received prison sentences of six and three month's, respectively.  The male was likely to have received a prison sentence measured in years, had he been prosecuted and convicted.

In another case, a fourteen-year-old boy admitted that he had lied when claiming that a church deacon had had sex with him and indecently assaulted him on several occasions. In court the boy confessed to lying to police and jurors, and accepted that he had previously made false allegations of a similar nature.

Only last year a wife admitted making a false claim to cover her infidelity.  These cases are legion and yet the Government still follows the politically correct consensus that it is the trial system that is defective rather than the jury having a healthy regard for the principle that it should be sure beyond doubt of a defendant's guilt.  The Government and women's groups are all of the same mind: "If she said it happened, it did!"  So juries are stupid, defence lawyers insensitive, male chauvinist/gender traitor, apologist, silver-tongued thugs and the defendants all guilty to a man.

The point that the Government just cannot or will not grasp is that a significant number of rape/serious sexual assault complainants tell lies.  The reasons for these lies are varied.  Very often it is a case of a woman scorned.  Sometimes it is a "cover up" for a sexual infidelity or an embarrassing (after the event) sexual liaison.  Occasionally it is for the purpose of being the centre of attention.  In the main, the "victims" are very convincing.  Bending the rules of evidence to make convictions easier to secure is not just dangerous, it is criminal.

I am given to understand that the Liberal Democrats have about 73,000 members.  As it appears likely that Michael Brown's £2.4 million donation might have to be repaid sooner or later, plans should be made to meet this liability, now.  Might I suggest that each and every party member contribute the sum of  £32.88 to party funds without delay?  That is all it takes to preserve a great party.  You know it is worth it.

Analysts seem to agree that the Conservatives face an uphill task in the forthcoming local elections, though “targets” are still being set that might make it difficult for them to avoid what their opponents will describe as an indifferent performance.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph Dr Robert Waller declares, 

“David Cameron's “modern and liberal” leadership will clearly be assessed in the light of the Conservative performance.”

 

“Prospects of [the Conservatives] gaining councils are relatively limited in the areas last contested in 2004, when the [their] showing was equivalent to a national share of around 37 per cent.” 

Dr Waller believes that there are few realistic chances of the Conservatives gaining control in town halls outside London though in London they have better prospects; as in 2002 they won an overall majority in only eight of the thirty-two boroughs.

Dr Waller concludes, 

“Overall, for the Tories, a net gain of 100 council seats across the country would be disappointing, anything over 300 very good progress, and 500-plus would raise hopes of an overall majority in the next general election….” 

whilst, 

“The Lib Dems will perform stronger than in the general election (as usual), and may finish second in national vote share, reinforcing optimism under Sir Menzies Campbell” 

and that, 

“The biggest question is whether the Conservatives can gain enough seats and councils to look as if they are once more credible contenders for national government.” 

In The Sunday Times Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher explained the problems that will be encountered by the Conservatives in that they must “overcome the handicap of the UK electoral system, both nationally and locally”, reminding us that in the May 2005 General Election the Conservatives won 3% less of the vote than Labour, but acquired 150 fewer seats.

In the London borough elections in 2002, when the seats were last contested, the Conservatives secured a similar number of votes to Labour, but won 654 seats to Labour’s 866.  As Messrs Rallings and Thrasher say, 

“It took nearly 900 votes to elect every Tory councillor but only 680 to elect a Labour one. And the boundaries had been reviewed immediately before the elections” 

and,

“Many Tory votes were “wasted” as big majorities were built up in wards where the party was safe. Labour, by contrast, won many of its own safe wards with very low numbers of votes. The average turnout in London in wards won by the Tories (35%) was above that for Labour (28%). The legacy of 2002 is that the Tories will need to be about seven points ahead of Labour in the popular vote to win more seats in the capital. This equates to a swing of 3.5% from Labour to the Tories. Anything less and Labour will be able to disguise the likely slump in its own vote by claiming it is still the leading party in London in terms of seats.”

This analysis puts the Conservatives’ task into perspective and to quote Mr Rallings and Mr Thrasher again, 

“It may therefore be unfair to judge Cameron’s impact as leader by seats alone. But he does need to demonstrate the Tories are attracting new support, rather than simply picking up the crumbs from standing still as former Labour voters desert their party for the Liberal Democrats or other smaller parties.”  

Prior to the revelations of this week, I had thought that Conservative success would be limited to a very modest gain in the share of votes cast (which was unlikely to translate into many, if any, new seats) and Labour support would continue its gradual downward drift with a few more seats lost (mainly to the Liberal Democrats) but not on an embarrassing scale.  As such, the Labour defeat could be spun into an “indifferent result”; the Liberal Democrats would claim victory and the Conservatives would be put to a lot of explaining.  Even a few days can be a long time in politics. There is now good reason to expect that support for Labour will significantly ebb.  As  Peter Riddell  said in The Times today, 

“The Blair Government’s luck may, at last, have run out: not primarily because of policies, but because of the appearance of incompetence…..

What really damages a Government is the appearance of not being in charge of prisoners, asylum-seekers or events.” 

Provided their vote holds firm, it is just possible for the Conservatives to secure sufficient gains in the forthcoming local elections to avoid being cast as the losers by New Labour, its media and the Liberal Democrats.

The last time I read the Daily Mirror, my fish and chips were wrapped in it.  That was a very long time ago.  Since the practise of wrapping chips in newspaper was banned, The Mirror has not had any real, useful purpose.  I was reminded of this this morning when my attention was drawn to the article by Kevin Maguire.

In brief, Mr Maguire was giving his considered, erudite opinion concerning the Conservative leader, David Cameron: - 

"I can think of many words beginning with C that describe David Cameron better than chameleon.  A list in a family newspaper cannot include the short, pithy, abusive word that accurately captures the dislike so many people feel for his type.  After all, we know Cameron is a Conservative so should leave it at that...."

He continues,

"Old Etonian Cameron's a prisoner of his class, the upper class, and condescension comes easily to Tory toffs though plays badly with voters who see straight through synthetic charm..."

and,

"...Cameron's honeymoon is over and he's flailing in the polls around the level he inherited from predecessor Michael "Dracula" Howard. That leaves Cameron resembling yet another Conservative Corpse, a leader destined to join Howard, Iain Duncan Smith, William Hague and John Major in the political graveyard.  The impression yesterday was of a pale, stale version of the young Tony Blair who captured Westminster just over a decade ago. If Cameron's all the Conservatives have to offer, Gordon Brown and Labour have little to worry about."

Finally,

".....I'd put £20 on voters seeing through his Crass strategy before the next general election."

No, Mr Maguire.  If you had the courage of your convictions, you would bet far, far more than that.

The purpose of Bryan Appleyard’s article in The Sunday Times on April 23, 2006 was to argue that British television news is dull and lacks substance, whilst in America, anchors have “authority and zest”.

Interestingly, in passing he had this to say as well: -  

[The BBC’s] primary news shows are now unwatchable. Of course, they have long been unwatchable if you object to political bias. The BBC won’t listen, but I’m afraid that the case is unarguable. The corporation is suffused with soft left and hard anti-American prejudices that seep into almost all the news coverage. By the time one gets to Newsnight and sees Gavin Esler treating any old hoodlum or crook with extravagant respect before turning to sneer at some decent American congressman, one can find oneself indulging in that awful, crazed habit of shouting at the TV.  Looking down at the vast BBC newsroom, I once made this point to an executive, who just looked blankly back as if I had unaccountably lapsed into Hungarian. To get her attention, I asked her to tell me which newspapers she could see on the desks. Amid that sea of reporters, only one title was visible — the eccentrically left-leaning Independent. 

Many of us no longer watch or listen to BBC News because of this bias and those of us who still do take what we are told with a pinch of salt.  For a public broadcasting service this is unacceptable. We demand more balance.  A significant proportion of the Licence Fee paying public (almost certainly the majority) is not Soft Left or anti-American or very pro-European Union.  Perhaps the BBC should, before dismissing criticism out of hand, bear in mind that he who pays the piper, calls the tune.

It is curious how certain hypotheses gain currency and quickly become accepted as an established fact, sometimes against the weight of evidence.

In the mid nineteen eighties I happened upon a BBC television programme examining the matter of heart disease.  The earnest presenter, a doctor, adamantly asserted that the “fatty heart hypothesis” was not a hypothesis, but a proven fact.  If you eat a fatty diet and don’t do any exercise, your arteries clog up and you die of a heart attack - plain and simple. It seemed a fairly sound argument to me. On the other hand I found his stridency jarring.  Other experts thought they were possessed of evidence undermining the fatty heart “fact” and this irritated the presenter, who saw them as heretics.

A few years later, I happened upon another programme about a body that had been discovered in a glacier in the Alps.  The body had been frozen intact, with the remains of clothes and some belongings. After examination by an assortment of experts, it was established that the individual had died about four thousand years ago.  He had been almost certainly a nomadic shepherd.  Forensic examination showed that he had not died of any illness nor had he been killed.  It was believed that he had been caught in a sudden blizzard and died of exposure. Examination of his bones suggested that he was aged about forty years or so old. 

It was possible to make a number of assumptions about his life style.  The glacier in which his body was frozen and transported down to the lowlands over the course of four thousand years, started life high in the Alps, where until the last century there had still been a tradition of shepherds moving livestock up and down the mountains through the passing of the seasons.  Thus he had not enjoyed a sedentary life style – it was not possible for him to have done so.  He had never eaten processed or fatty foods.  He had not been afflicted by any of the vices of soft, lazy, easy late-twentieth century living.  Yet examination showed that his arteries had fatty deposits just like your average, overweight, unfit company executive.  Oh well, it's back to the drawing board.

I was reminded of this when a number of scientists[1], who had been routinely ignored for years, published an open letter challenging the orthodoxy of “global warming”.  It was then disclosed elsewhere that the purportedly inevitable, inexorable increase in global temperature had fizzled out in 1998.[2]  The global warming theorists may yet be proved to be right. Then again, they might be shown to be as misguided as flat earthers. 
 

[1]   Sixty-one experts, as it happens.  The letter was dated 6^th April 2006.

[2] Professor Bob Carter, a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland.  For a full report see The Daily Telegraph 9^th April 2006.

I have a shocking admission to make.  I have always had a soft spot for Cherie Blair.  My prejudices in that respect were reinforced when a very good friend of mine, who had met Mrs Blair in a professional capacity, confided that she was a very pleasant, likeable individual.  It should not surprise anyone therefore when I declare that charging the Labour Party for her hairdressing was reasonable.  In these “presidential” times, the First Lady has to look the part and I have little doubt that the effort she applied to Labour’s election campaign was worth thousands of votes.

The disparity in cost between Sandra Howard’s hairdressing expenses (£65) and those of Mrs Blair (£7,700) however, is symptomatic of the difference between Labour and the Conservatives in matters concerning money. A high proportion of Conservative MPs and Councillors, by virtue of having been or being engaged in business, know the value of money. They have learned to watch the bottom line.  They have learned to be prudent.  They know what they can and cannot afford. They hate waste.  They want their money’s worth.

This fiscal responsibility on the part of the Conservatives has always been portrayed by its political opponents as a vice, whereas it is a virtue.  It is so readily forgotten that the sound economy about which we hear so much by way of Gordon Brown’s boasts, was created by the Conservatives, not Labour. 

The extent of the Labour Government’s wastefulness is truly shocking.  Recent examples include the more than £2 billion in overpaid benefits received by the unemployed and people on low incomes, since Labour came to power.  Ministers limply claim that there was nothing they could do to recoup the cash other than ask people to repay it voluntarily.  As much as £500 million [1] may have been wasted by the NHS overpaying for just three prescription drugs over the last three years.  What an extraordinary state of affairs. In spite of the many extra billions spent on the NHS by Labour, staff are being sacked and numerous hospitals threatened with closure, something that never happened under the Conservatives.

Labour was able to evict the Conservatives from power in 1997 because the electorate believed that the old spend, spend, spend Labour Party was a thing of the past.  Tony Blair admitted openly that a problem cannot be solved by simply throwing money at it. Since 1997, Labour has done nothing but.

Following Iain Dale’s scoop yesterday about Michael Brown, the Liberal Democrats' benefactor to the tune of £2.4 million[1], today it is reported by Rajeev Syal, Dominic Kennedy and James Doran of  The Times that: - 

 “The Lib Dems, already risking bankruptcy if the donation is ruled ineligible by the Electoral Commission[2], sought to distance themselves yesterday from the latest events. The Lib Dems issued a statement yesterday saying:

 

 “We are not aware that this has any connection with the Liberal Democrats. Any further action is a matter for the police and for the relevant authorities.” ”

“Distance themselves from their biggest donor”?  They are not going to manage that until they have distanced themselves from the £2.4 million he donated - by giving it back.

It is perhaps surprising that no one saw Employment Minister Margaret Hodge confiding her “fears” about the BNP to The Sunday Telegraph for what it really was - a clever but cynical ploy to bolster the ethnic Labour vote in wards assessed as liable to fall to the main opposition parties.  At the same time it is calculated that now, the protest vote will drift away from mainstream opposition parties in the best position to challenge Labour, diverting to the BNP candidate who in spite of the hype, is not likely to win.  The anti-Labour vote is further divided and potential advances by the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives,  stymied. 

The ploy is well worth the risk because though it might hand no more a dozen or so seats to the BNP, it will deny scores to the mainstream opposition. This masterly tactic on the part of New Labour has ensured also that the BNP has now enjoyed its fifteen minutes of fame and peaked too early.  The message by Labour candidates to the traditional (but disgruntled) Labour voter is clear.  “We hear you! We feel for you!  We are really on your side!”

Since I posted an article challenging the emerging orthodoxy that Labour were going to lose “big” and the Conservatives should win “hundreds of seats”, wiser heads, armed with more detailed analysis and the latest opinion polls, are now creating a consensus that the election results are most likely to be capable of being spun by each major party as a success of sorts. The Liberal Democrats are still going to have the most to cheer about, at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives.  The sheer determination of Liberal Democrat activists can never be underestimated. It is going to be the Conservatives who suffer what will appear to be an indifferent result.  The rise in popularity of the Conservative party appears to have stalled again according to the latest YouGov poll, though nevertheless positive trends are emerging.  The poll sample seemed to believe that in some respects the Conservatives were thinking along the right lines and that “the Tories under their new leader deserve another year or two to work out their policies”.  For these reasons alone, purportedly indifferent results for the Conservatives will not represent a setback.

One of the many reasons the results of these forthcoming local elections are too close to call is that it is not clear that the electorate is ready to use them as a referendum against the Government. If local issues remain largely to the fore, Labour cannot be punished much more than it has been already.  It follows that those calling for a tactical vote against Labour for the purpose of causing Tony Blair to be deposed in a night of the long knives, are going to be sorely disappointed.  By there not being a landslide against Mr Blair, ironically he can claim victory, come 5^th May 2006. 

For Mr Blair, it might not be that he remains Premier “to infinity and beyond” but at the very least until 2008.

President John Prescott.

“Tony Blair has revealed the huge funding pressures on Labour in private remarks to party workers, saying that they need to find four or five times more cash to fight the next election.  Mr Blair told senior party figures that the extra cash was desperately needed to match expected Conservative spending in target seats from now until the next election”

reported David Charter of The Times on 17^th April 2006.  Mr Charter continued,

 “His verdict came after an analysis of Tory spending in the two years before last year’s election, which showed that Labour was outspent by a factor of 2.4 to 1 in 93 target seats. In three seats that Labour lost, the Tories spent more than ten times as much in the months before the election was called.

 

Labour insiders believe that extra Tory spending power cost the party at least a dozen seats in the general election last year and they will push for annual constituency spending limits. Spending is now strictly capped only from when the election is called. Senior Labour figures are alarmed at the pace of the “arms race” in party funding, which some fear is driving the dash for cash behind the “cash for honours” scandal.

 

Peter Bradley, who lost his seat of The Wrekin after the Tories spent 10.9 times as much as Labour, has compiled an analysis of targeted funding from Electoral Commission figures. Mr Bradley said: “My research identifies a strong correlation between a party’s capacity to outspend its rivals and the swing in its favour in key marginal seats.”

It might be recalled that I have a fondness for Mr Bradley and have posted about him before.  To recap, I consider that Mr Bradley is a sore loser.  The Tories weren't playing fair by spending more during their campaign to “take” his marginal[1], he bleats.  It has escaped his consciousness entirely, that his arguably odious comment made during the passage of the Hunting Bill through Parliament galvanised against him specifically, political opposition of all hues (including the associated funding.)  He made the Hunting Bill personal and he paid the price.  In any event, I digress.  My argument is that it is perfectly acceptable for political parties to target the seats they have assessed to be “for the taking” (or for that matter, defending.)  The Liberal Democrats would suffer in particular, if they were prevented from targetting, after all, it is what they are so good at.

Notwithstanding New Labour’s attempt to spin the Conservatives’ targeted spending as being “underhand”, of course, our Mr Blair’s New Labour does  the same thing.  Fast forward one day, and we are embroiled in the BNP story reported by David Aaronovitch of The Times.  As everyone will recall,  allegedly Minister Margaret Hodge had told The Sunday Telegraph that her white, working-class constituents in Barking are contemplating a serious electoral flirtation with Nick Griffin’s British National Party.  Mrs Hodge’ parliamentary neighbour Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, let the cat out of the bag when giving his opinion concerning the rise in popularity of the BNP. Mr Aaronovitch reports (though the emphasis is mine),

 “[Mr Cruddas’] assertion is that the BNP phenomenon is caused by a failure of mainstream, especially Labour, politicians to appeal to “traditional” voters. Instead, the parties try to maximise their appeal to middle-class swing voters in marginal constituencies. Labour’s project has ceased to be the “emancipation” of the still large working class.”

Well there you have it.  Labour targets marginals too.  This leaves me with one last thing to say.  Shut it, Bradley.

So, Brian Galvin, the new president of the National Union of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) would have us believe that Baroness Thatcher is to blame for our current social ills.  Unfortunately, he did not prepare his homework; I mean speech, quite as well as he should.  In addressing his union’s annual conference in Birmingham last week he confided that “over liberalised attitudes in the 1960s and 1970s had also contributed to social ills.”

Now, bearing in mind that the Milk Snatcher did not have “over liberalised” tendencies and that those over liberal attitudes complained of pre-dated her Government by up to twenty years, doesn’t Mr Galvin’s argument contain the seeds of its own destruction?

Oh, and by the way, which profession was at the vanguard of introducing “liberalised” ideas into our schools during the 1960’s and 1970’s and making them orthodoxy during the 1980’s and 1990’s?

Three out of ten, Mr Galvin.

In the great scheme of things, on the Bad Legislation Richter Scale, the Housing Act 2004 does not approach the severity of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.  However, whilst the weighty issues involving the abolition of Parliament and identity cards have largely by-passed the consciousness of the general public, ironically it is this seemingly innocuous Act that is likely to hurt the public in a way that the public comprehends, that is to say, through the pocket.  It is likely therefore to inflict more damage upon the popularity of this Government than either the imposition of identity cards or an Act granting unnaturally wide and extensive powers to the Executive.  So far the Government has been able to plough ahead with its plans to introduce the so-called Home Information Packs (HIPs) by virtue of the said Act.

HIPs will do nothing for improving or smoothing the sale and purchase of residential property.  It will assist the Government (at the public's sole cost) in creating a data base regarding the state of its housing stock (as required by EU law.)  It will add unnecessary and substantial cost to the transaction of buying and selling a home and cause delay.

Many firms involved in the residential property market are so concerned at the effect of the HIPs that an action group SPLINTA (Sellers Pack Law Is Not The Answer) has been formed for the purpose of seeking to convince the Government of the error of its ways. It is not only "vested interests" (that is to say, the professionals who know what they are talking about) who are concerned.  For more details concerning HIPs, view this page comprising a Fact Sheet prepared by SPLINTA and a message from Kirstie Allsopp & Phil Spencer, presenters of the Channel 4 programme Location, Location, Location.

I have touched upon this issue before.  I find it curious that Labour thinks it can fool us into believing that there will be a substantial change for the better when Gordon Brown takes over the premiership.  Mr Brown has been one half of the terrible twins these past nine years and has been involved in every decision made by the Labour Government.  Mr Brown is a very big player in Labour’s team and is tainted with every mistake and wrongdoing.  Peas in pod, says Martin Samuel.

It is only right that a person who incurs an expense in performing a duty, contractual or otherwise on behalf of another, is reimbursed for that expense; not a penny less, not a penny more.  Parliamentary rules might not have been breached by various Ministers or ordinary MPs in claiming such allowances, but nevertheless it is very clear that the “reimbursement” is extremely generous. These gravy trains are not appreciated by the General Public.   We are being ripped off.   It has to stop, now.[1]

Much has been made of Francis Maude’s comment that the Conservatives might not win the next General Election. Why? Commentators have been saying as much since before David Cameron was elected as leader.  We are informed repeatedly that the Conservatives require a percentage “swing” in their favour well beyond anything they have ever achieved against Labour in any General Election since 1945.  Commentators have been talking down the Conservative Party’s prospects of winning an election ever since doubts began to surface about Tony Blair’s Government.  That the Conservatives cannot achieve such a swing is not an immutable law. It is the result of a number of factors, not least of which is that the psephologists seem to miss the point that until 1997, all Labour administrations since 1945 seemed to expire after about six years, whilst save for that of Edward Heath, Conservative ones lasted thirteen and eighteen years, respectively.  By the next General Election the New Labour administration will have reached that longevity where if it has not turned substantially from its current course, it will be punished at the polls in a fashion that had been reserved previously for Conservative Governments that had overstayed their welcome.

David Cameron has been in charge of the Conservative party for just four months.  He has a lot of work still to do.  For the Labour Government, everything is just hunky-dory.  No matter what it does wrong, it does not appear to be prejudiced unduly in the opinion polls, at least not for long.  For the Liberal Democrats, though in truth their tide is ebbing, they shall shortly enjoy the euphoria of success against both Labour and the Conservatives in the forthcoming local elections.[1]

The Conservatives should not look to achieve short-term success or popularity.  They are working for sustainable success in the long-term.  The Conservatives’ policy review must be given time to correctly identify the electorate’s real concerns and effectively address them.  It matters not that David Cameron’s project to reform his party appears to stall, because in truth, it has not.  Indifferent opinion poll results mean nothing.  To a great extent they are a collective, self-fulfilling prophecy.  The largely pro Labour media must be expected to focus relentlessly upon the Conservatives’ “failure” to effect a break through in popular support, whilst correspondingly ignoring or playing down Government waste, incompetence, venality and/or sheer deceit.  With the dice so heavily loaded against the Conservatives, it is hardly surprising that the going is tough.

The electorate is not going to be convinced overnight.  The Labour Party’s success in rebuilding itself after spending years in the political wilderness was not achieved during Mr Blair’s brief few years as Leader of the Opposition; the process had started years earlier under Neil Kinnock.  It cannot be any different for the Conservatives, no matter what the legion of pro Labour political commentators and journalists say or infer to the contrary.

The results of the local elections on 4^th  May 2006 will be used as much as the electorate’s purported verdict on David Cameron’s leadership as a referendum on Mr Blair’s continued premiership.  Already the “hurdles” that the Conservatives are being required to clear before being able to claim success have been raised ominously.

“Overall, election analysts believe the Tories should be looking for an extra 300 councillors in England to be able to claim victory,”

we are told and,

“In London, the Tories did relatively well in last year's general election and so Mr Cameron cannot have any excuses if he fails to make real progress.”

However, for the Liberal Democrats,

 “According to the analysts, 100 overall gains would make it a good night for Sir Menzies while net losses would be seen as a bad performance.”

The problem for the Conservatives is that at a local election level, Labour has been unpopular for a few years now. Conservative seats that fell to other parties during the last years of  John Major's Conservative Government have been recovered, more or less. Furthermore, the most vulnerable Labour seats have already fallen to the opposition parties.  A protest vote against Labour councillors is more likely to benefit the Liberal Democrats than the Conservatives.  Thus, though the Conservatives will make steady progress, it will be the Liberal Democrats who will appear to be the winners of the forthcoming local elections.  Even “election experts”,

 “admit it will not be easy for [David Cameron] to make sweeping gains because the Tories are already the largest party in local government,”

and,

 “Far from shooting at an open goal, David Cameron's first nationwide electoral test in May [2006] sees him having to defend something of a Conservative high water mark,”

according to Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, directors of the Local Government Chronicle Elections Centre at Plymouth University.

The Conservatives will not achieve 300 gains.  It is nonsense to suggest they should, while holding the Liberal Democrats to a mere 100.[1]  At this point, is important to bear in mind that as far as local politics are concerned, this is a three horse race.  After all, the Liberal Democrats have 4,300 councillors and control 34 authorities.

For the opposition parties to achieve their gains, Labour will have to suffer 400 net losses.[2]  Unless the Labour vote collapses, this is a tall order.  Whilst the English blogosphere has taken largely against Labour, opinion polls indicate that the general public has not.  Labour has already lost most of its vulnerable seats.  Votes for the opposition might pile up in seats already lost, but Labour is not going to lose many hundreds more seats.

 The Conservatives must be careful not to accept or have foisted upon them a “consensus” as to how many gains they must achieve before they are considered successful, particularly when the Liberal Democrats are being allowed such a modest target by “the experts”. Unless the Conservatives  inject some realism into the projections currently being broached, they will hand a “victory” to the Liberal Democrats, let Labour off the hook and provoke unending speculation about David Cameron's leadership and the Party’s future prospects.[3]

The answer is nothing, save that it does not allow Mr Blair to get on with the important job he has in hand.  In The Daily Telegraph today, Simon Heffer addresses some questions to the Labour MPs who will grant Mr Blair the new powers he desires.  I should like to hear the answers.

An elected House of Lords might prove to be an unmitigated disaster.  In the unlikely event that its political composition was significantly different from the Commons, it should claim to have a mandate to balk any legislation with which it disagreed.  This could result in either deadlock or an unseemly, prolonged scrabble for a compromise that satisfies no one and accords with neither party’s manifesto commitments.  More likely, is that the upper house would more often than not reflect the political composition of its sister house, thereby ensuring that any Government of the day could simply ramrod through its entire legislative programme with little resistance.

The idea that members of the new upper house should be appointed also raises fears, particularly if any political organisation is able to influence the making of any appointment even to the slightest degree. However, if that risk can be eliminated, an appointed House of Lords comprising of the great and the good would be viable, though it would suffer two fatal weaknesses.  Without being elected, it could never possess the authority to stop dead bad or deeply unpopular legislation.  Should it seriously offend the Commons, it could find itself reformed into oblivion. An unelected upper house must be possessed of a weapon by which the Commons can be made to listen, even against its will.  Perhaps that power could be the right to call for a referendum upon the contentious issue at hand.[1]

What we must not forget is that Mr Blair is a man with a mission; a mission to get his way and ensure that his New Labour “legacy” lasts.  What better method than by creating an upper chamber that not only assists him to ramrod through his pet legislation but can balk any attempt to repeal the same by an incoming Government of differing political persuasion?  The current House of Lords and opposition parties must deal with Mr Blair and his plans to re-reform the upper chamber, robustly.

In his article in The Sunday Times today, Rod Liddle rightly rails against The Labour Government’s new proposals concerning rape law.  I have already made my views know regarding this matter in a recent post and previously.  The article deserves to be read in its entirety but Mr Liddle concludes: -

"Now the government wants to have it both ways: it wishes the legal system to assume that actions undertaken by a person who is drunk are in one case the responsibility of the individual who is drunk and in another case — the extremely serious charge of rape — they are not. This makes no sense, either moral, logical or legal.

 

Further, O’Brien’s [Mike O’Brien, the Solicitor General - the Government's second most senior Law Officer] proposed change to the law ignores the probability that people drink alcohol precisely in order to loosen their inhibitions and to enjoy the consequences that come from being in such a state. In other words, the state of dereliction or abandon in which they later find themselves was planned at the beginning of the evening. If this were not the case, why would people drink alcohol? Are we to assume that they drink not realising what is to become of them?

 

Not so long ago Amnesty International carried out a survey which revealed that a substantial minority of the British people thought that in some rape cases women were partially “responsible” for the crime. Again, this strikes me as not entirely stupid — and yet the poll results were greeted with unmitigated horror by Amnesty and indeed the media. The British public needs educating about rape, they all howled. But it does not. People live in the real world, rather than the political world: they know what rape is and the actions which might be taken by women to avoid it.

 

My guess is that they also know that when a woman drunkenly consents to sex it is not the same as rape, and that any later sense of culpability or shame rests in equal proportions upon the shoulders of the man and the woman, however “immoral” either party might consider the act to have been."

These new rape proposals are just the latest evidence of a wider malaise,[1]  but my real concern is how these imbalanced and so often clearly flawed ideas and opinions are fed to us by our “free” pro-Labour media.  We are softened up routinely by a creeping barrage of sympathetic, uncritical media reporting in support of the “new establishment” view.  Opponents of the new “consensus” are given short shrift or disparaged.[2]

A confederacy of disparate single issue pressure groups, united by their belief in the absolute righteousness of their cause, now have the ear of like minded individuals in the Government, the media and beyond.  Unable to forge a society in their image through the ballot box,  they use the media to manipulate the public by misinformation.  Their views are right and ours are wrong: so we need re-education.

The public perceives that it is not being told the truth and distrusts both journalists and politicians alike.  So long as this manipulation continues, politics will continue to be an irrelevance to the majority of people, television viewing figures will continue to fragment in favour of the entertainment channels and newspaper circulations will continue to fall.

There is an opportunity for the Conservatives here.  Over the course of the past ten years or more they have struggled to speak the same language as the electorate.  That language is very simple.  It is based upon common sense and the truth.  It is a language no longer spoken by either the Labour Government or the pro Labour media.  No amount of spin can hide that.

"New blood ends decades of Tory power!" declares the Surrey Guardian (aka Surrey Advertiser) this week as it reports the victory of an Independent candidate Diane James in a by election for the vacant Waverley Borough Council seat for Ewhurst.

The former incumbent of the seat, the Conservative Richard Warby had resigned and the Conservative candidate Richard Cleaves failed to retain it. The result was close, with Mr Cleaves losing by just twelve votes.  The election result was curious for a number of reasons. The Labour vote did not just collapse - it almost ceased to exist.  Labour's Richard Chaundy received just six votes.  The Liberal Democrats, who had almost snatched the seat from the Conservatives at the previous election, saw their vote fall by nearly a hundred votes, even though there was an increased (and rather impressive) turnout of 58.6% of the electorate.[1]

The point that puzzles me is this.  Prior to the election, the Liberal Democrats held 29 seats, the Conservatives 28 and the Independents 2.  Now the ratio is 29:27:3.  I recollect that Waverley Borough Council had "gone" Lib Dem quite a few local elections ago anyway, in which case "decades of Tory power" ended then, not now.  Quite obviously I am not possessed of all the facts and no doubt someone will enlighten me.[2]

This is one of those factual reports that are likely to prove very useful to refer to from time to time when listening to Labour's NewSpeak and particularly when Gordon Brown starts spitting "facts" in all directions.