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ballotIn the run up to the European and General Elections, Cambria Politico will be publishing occasional articles and opinion pieces about the reasons to vote FOR a particular political party. A great deal has been written about the negative  ‘attack dog’  role of political blogs and, without giving up on our campaigns against corruption and loss of liberty, we want to provide a more balanced positive commentary.

We will be taking each party in turn and finding one good reason to vote for them, starting with NuLiebour oops! Labour. We will also be scoring them against appropriate parameters to put them in a historical and societal context.

Finding a good reason to vote FOR Labour at the present moment is difficult. However, the Labour Party/Movement has an honourable history, has accomplished many fine things, and has produced figures and personalities of international renown and historical significance.  It has a proud and valued record of  social and political achievements.

labourtideBut that was then and this is now. Labour is now psychologically and socialogically an irrelevance. It has washed out on the tide of political thinking. In Monty Python terms, it is a Dead Parrot or on a par with the People’s Front of Judea or is it Judean People’s Front?

So where is the FOR reason to vote for them?

The brilliant  SF author John Brunner, wrote a famous novel  published in 1965 entitled ‘The Squares of the City’ (ISBN 0-345-27739-2). It is a sociological story of urban class warfare and political intrigue, taking place in the fictional South American capital city of Vados. It explores the idea of subliminal messages as political tools, and it is notable for having the structure of the famous 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz and Mikhail Chigorin. In this story, society is ‘managed’ using city planning techniques. There are no actual villains and heroes it is mainly  an exploration of how people can be controlled using bulldozers, urban planning  and surveillance. The grim and powerful result is a true nightmare foreshadowing present and possible future conditions in Britain.

So how does this relate to a positive vote for Labour? Brunner, Orwell and other writers, like the late J.G.Ballard, tell us that a truly ‘efficient’ and well organised government is the greatest threat to freedom and human liberties of thought. So a vote for  a useless, chaotic, bumbling, directionless government with real identifiable  ‘faces’ attached to it is a vote for liberty and freedom from faceless efficient supra national oppression. Labour is classically inept and disorganised and thus truly worthy of your vote.

Forget the lies, the minor expenses corruption, the broken manifesto committments, Labour is infinitely preferable to a Brunner, Orwellian, Kafka-esque world of super efficient civil service and control by ‘faceless’ bureaucratic elites exemplified by the frightening Kinnockian European ideal.

Political X Factor Scoring

PARAMETER SCORE (out of 10)
Leadership 1
Grassroots Organisation 5
History 9
Corruption 2
X Factor / Charisma 1
Planet Earth Reality 2
Future Potential 0
Policies 8
Personalities 3
Financial Competence 1
Magic 0
Internet Awareness 2
Governmental Competence 4
Media Savvy 5

TIDE OF HISTORY : AGAINST

Selected quotes:

“[This Labour government] is the most mendacious, dishonest, endemically corrupt, power-hungry, incompetent, illiberal f**king shower of shits that has ruled this country…”—Devil’s Kitchen

Times’ David Aaronovitch – similar wavelength?

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draper1We’ve now had a sort of apology from Derek Draper of LabourList blog (see below) so now the people of Wales should get a similar apology from the scurrilous perpetrators of the Aneurin Glyndwr blog for their gross mis-representations of senior Welsh political figures and bringing politics into further disrepute (if that were possible).

Since the beginning of this year we have worked hard to build a Labour supporting presence online. 99.9% of that time was taken up by setting up LabourList and trying to build it into our version of ConservativeHome. I am proud of what we have achieved in those three months. But of course I regret the 0.1% of my time that I spent thinking about how we might set up a separate left wing “gossipy” site. We had been looking at the success of the right across the blogosphere and seen how effective their more scurrilous elements were. To be honest I think we were a bit dazzled by what they get up to.

In these troubled times, we need 100% of our politicians’ time to be devoted to serving the people rather than infighting on the blogosphere. Leave this to the modern versions of Jonathon Swift who do it so much better.

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Byline: The Rev Idwal Lloyd Price

Owain GlyndwrYou’ve got to admit it, it’s an interesting idea juxtaposing the names of Aneurin Bevan, fiery champion of the working masses and international socialist, later socialite, landowner and lusty devourer of Saxon gold, and Owain Glyndwr, undefeated guerrilla warrior and champion of Welsh independence, who fought with sinew, blood, smoke and steel to throw the English out of Wales, in one website name.

But this is what  ‘Welsh’ Liebour have done with their new Dolly Draperesque  political blog their “Obama moment” riposte to Plaid Cymru’s genuinely sleek, professional and reasoned www.walescan.com.

Perhaps the scintillating talents of Liebour’s obviously underused propaganda department would have done better with www.clutchingatstraws.com ­ a far more appropriate title for you can’t imagine two more fundamentally dissimilar, disparate or heterogeneous characters than Aneurin Bevan and Owain Glyndwr if you tried very hard indeed. Put together Attila the Hun and Mother Theresa perhaps, Sweeney Todd and Robert the Bruce, Mickey Mouse and Che Guevara and you’ll have an approximation as to how risible this is.

The lumping together of the two is also interesting in that it betrays one of Liebour’s dark secrets: the fudging of the ‘Greatest Welshman of All Time’ poll on 1st March 2004 which ensured that Bevan beat Owain Glyndwr by 127 votes in a highly dubious, and quite plainly gerrymandered, internet poll.

The site itself with its crude unprofessional titling, appalling sound quality and fifth rate graphics looks very much as though the editor of the Wasting Mule and his team had been hired as production consultants. The brains (!) behind the whole extraordinary and embarrassing exercise is none other than Eluned Morgan, once a Sandinista-championing, red-beret wearing, slogan-shrieking member of the wimmin’s club, and latterly lamentable sidekick and lackey to Glenys Kinnock, assisted by the orange-skinned lounge-lizard Peter “Vain” Hain, the supercilious and superfluous former Secretary of State for Wales. It was indeed wonderful to see this valueless virago appearing on BBC Wales’s lunchtime news claiming huge volumes of visitors to the site. Calm down dear ­ we’re only going there to laugh at you!

On Liebour’s “Obama moment” website ­ which, incidentally, would prove a severe embarrassment to the IT department of Ysgol Meithrin Cwmscwt .­ Nick Bourne is portrayed as a vampire, Ieuan Wyn Jones, Jill Evans and Adam Price are portrayed as clowns.

Well let’s look at the real vampires and clowns in Wales shall we? The English Liebour Party in Wales is facing oblivion. Their power base, built on patronage, intimidation and corruption, is melting away before their eyes. The recession will wipe it out. Desperate for a lifeline (in other words their own salaries and fiddled, inflated expenses, whether as MEPs, MPs or AMs) they are clutching at straws and lashing out in all directions. And we can expect a whole lot more of this in the coming months before Liebour’s ignominious defeat at the next Westminster election.

Liebour has sucked the political blood of Wales dry for nigh on a century. Now, with their teeth drawn after the greatest election loss since the Second World War in 2008, the vampires have become clowns, frightened of the inevitable dawning of the New Wales, terrified of the solid stake of Welsh oak aimed at their collective heart.

Let us use the words of one of the greatest American Presidents of all time to describe their attempt at aping the success of the latest one. Liebour’s pitiful endeavour trying to use slick media tricks instead of winning the hearts and minds of Welsh voters in an honest and open way is, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “as thin as the homeopathic soup made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.”

Byline: The Rev Idwal Lloyd Price

Update: see Hen Ferchetan on this
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Video of Draper’s Downfall. Derek Draper is the creator of the new labourlist political blog and everyone in the blogosphere appears to hate him. He is also subject to allegations of  misleading claims for  professional qualifications as a clinical pyschotherapist.

Hat tip Donal Blaney

If NuLiebour are reduced to using people of this quality for their online campaigns then their situation is more than dire.

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Jacqui (Smith) and NuLiebour want to hack into your computer without your permission. Is this right?

Increased scrutiny of the public’s online activities could undermine the viability of the web, says lawyer Ruth Hoy.
Source: Silicon.com

eyes

They are spying on you now

The Home Office’s recent announcement that it is working with the EU to grant police powers to hack into personal computers without a warrant threatens to rock the delicate balance between the need to tackle cybercrime and the right to personal privacy.

This is a very serious issue for political bloggers like Cambria Politico and a theme on which we will be campaigning  this year. Not that we have anything to hide! The government is welcome to to look at our computers at any time but only with our express permission or a legal warrant that gives justifiable cause.

At a time when even the US President is requiring increased transparency in government this goes against the trend and makes the Labour government look even more out of touch.

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Cambria Politico End of Year Award for blogging:

Best Blog Post of 2008

Definitive Rant by Peoples Republic of Mortimer

Best Blog

  1. NoGoodBoyo
  2. Guido Fawkes
  3. Robert Peston

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda i chi gyd.

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In a speech to the Hansard Society, Hazel Blears has talked about political bloggers. See here for BBC report.

“The most popular blogs are right-wing, ranging from the considered Tory views of Iain Dale, to the vicious nihilism of Guido Fawkes,” she said.

But she added: “Unless and until political blogging ‘adds value’ to our political culture, by allowing new and disparate voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and pessimism.”

Guido Fawkes has made the following riposte which I agree with.

“Take a memo Ms Blears, we are not here to ‘add value’, or do what politicians want, Guido has his own values and aims to hit back at political hypocrisy and lies. Politicians make laws, so they should be held to account, to a higher standard,” he wrote.

John Marek one of our own politicians (Independent, Wrexham) has said…

“Blogs appear to be used by a disproportionately large number of headbangers and people without a life.”

We say to politicians like Marek… so Barack Obama is a ‘headbanger’ according to you, since inspired use of blogs and the Internet propelled him from nowheresville to the US Presidency. As I have stated before, most politicians in the UK (with some honorable blogging exceptions) are dinosaurs and way behind ‘the curve’.

We need a big clearout.

Here is Iain Dale’s take on this

A MUST READ rant is here

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Cambria Books

New publication.
Important contribution to our knowledge of the Arab Spring by Denis Campbell.

Cambria Books

New publication. Entertaining guide to the US Elections by Denis Campbell.
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