As usual, you read it here first. Though the news from the lastest Times poll seems to be worse that I had expected, with both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives making losses. I can’t really even begin to understand what it is that Labour have done in the past few weeks to make potential voters switch allegiance to them – I can only suggest that, perhaps, three percent of the population have gone quite mad. I can’t think of any reason why anybody, traditional Labour supporter or not, would want Labour in power again with a huge majority. Governments with big majorities cannot be as effectively challenged, and so the result is bad policies.

Anyway, this is only a poll, and only of 1,518 people. So it might not be as bad as it seems. Hopefully.

As much as it pains me to admit this, Tony Blair’s plans for immigration are far better and more considered than Michael Howard’s, on which I have previously commented.

Far more distressing, however, is that a Times/Populus poll to be published tomorrow will, according to my sources, show that Labour has a nine point lead over the Conservatives. This is terrible news. If Labour maintain their huge majority, then it will doubtless be bad for the country. But perhaps the poll will reveal some more heartening news about the relative positions of the parties, with the Lib Dems perhaps taking up some of the slack. It’s probably best not to comment until the results are published. But when they are, I will.

Compare for a moment the homepages of the country’s two biggest political parties, just weeks before an anticipated General Election.

The Conservative homepage tells me that they think immigration limits are the way forward, that homeowners, rather than burglars, should be protected by the law, and that they have clearly set out policies for action on tax, schools, hospitals, crime, asylum, and immigration. It carries only two (small) mentions of the Labour Party.

The Labour Party homepage tells me that the Tories are bad. It tells me nothing at all about Labour policies. In fact, the Tory party takes up the second-biggest headline on the page. And the only pictured party leader is Michael Howard! There’s isn’t a Labour member in sight!

And yet, despite hiding their policies away beneath a thick layer of Tory-bashing, Labour is ahead in the opinion polls, and roundly predicted to win the next general election.

Who said that intelligent discussion is the way forward for politics?

So Labour’s new slogan isn’t actually a million miles away from my suggestion after all, then. It does seem strange that a party in power for eight years should be telling us to forget the past – the logical way to interpret it is that they’re ashamed of their record.

Though I believe that Alan Milburn (of whom I’m not a particular fan) has already been out defending this badly written Campbell-ine soundbite, saying that

the “back” of the slogan referred to Tory failures, and not to the past eight years of Labour government.

Surely they must have realised that this would just make them look like comic fools before they unleashed it?

So Kilroy-Silk promises surprises with his new party? It’ll be composed entirely of trans-sexuals who are having affairs with homosexual dwarves? That’s the kind of person he’d be used to, after all his TV work.

How can he possibly beleive that this little party of his is ever going to get anywhere? He’s a delusional fool. But I’ll be watching the party launch (if anybody’s showing it) for the comedy value.

Now I’m off to watch PMQs.

This article from BBC News says that

The former Labour culture secretary, Chris Smith, has revealed he has been HIV positive for 17 years.

This shouldn’t be big news. The more that HIV is treated like some terrible disease that has to be ‘announced’, the greater the stigma that will be attached to it. Chris Smith was right to make it public that he has HIV (he makes a very convincing argument for doing so in today’s Sunday Times), but the media are wrong to make such a big fuss about it.

This is getting out of hand. The exaggerated version of a religious cult portrayed in a work of fiction (and, as I’ve said previously, not a particularly good one at that) has somehow crossed into mainstream politics.

Ruth Kelly was right not to distance herself from her religion, and if fools want to criticise her for belonging to an organisation they know very little about, then let them go ahead.

In particular, I think Matthew Parris’s comments in the Times are unconsidered:

[Kelly] has rejected a suggestion that her religious beliefs could affect the way she carries out her role in government in relation to sex education. How so? Does a believer not believe religion has lessons in this area? And, more importantly, at a time when the status of “faith” schools is a vexed question, can Ms Kelly really stay dispassionate in the tussle between those who do and those who do not believe that the State — and the taxpayer — should be sponsoring faith-based education?

What does Matthew Parris suggest we should do? Have only Education Ministers with no particular relgious faith? Or would that bias them against faith-based schools?

Ruth Kelly should be left alone to privately practise her beliefs. There are bigger, more important, battles to fight in the political arena than this.

I’m sorry. It just seemed silly to write a post about a poster without posting a picture of said poster. But it also seemed silly to post a picture of a poster that supported the party I’m criticising. So I butchered it. Anyway…

Is there any more time less appropriate than when election campaigning to be insulting large parts of the population? Probably not.

I’m certainly not of the opinion that this poster was designed to be Anti-Semitic, and I’m not even particular against it on that level. It just seems foolish to start a poster campaign that will insult a lot of potential voters.

But the worst part of this story is the response of the Labour bigwigs, as reported in this Guardian piece:

Labour has insisted that this is over-sensitivity and it can be argued that we now live in a culture in which squads of the thin-skinned are on 24-hour alert.

As usual, despite having made an honest error, Labour can’t bring themselves to apologise. Let me just reiterate on that point: The party which is being strongly criticised for being unable to admit mistakes and say sorry is refusing to apologise for it’s election campaign insulting large swathes of the population.

And, not only that, the party which wants to limit our free speech by virtually reintroducing blasphemy law claims that the public is ‘over-sensitive’.

This was a silly and simple mistake by Labour, but their response has made it far, far worse.

Update:

It is one of four designs e-mailed to Labour members, who were asked to vote for their favourite.

This seems to be something that’s circulating about various news stories, such as The BBC’s. But this is not just circulated by email – it’s also freely available on the Labour website, from where I downloaded it. I am not a member of the Labour party (doesn’t that go without saying?), and I don’t receive emails from them.

Man charged over Kilroy ‘attack’ (BBC News)

As much as I disagree with his methods – it’s not a terribly good idea to go pouring slurry over people – I do think that Kilroy has somewhat walked into this kind of abuse. If he will insult great swathes of the population, does he not expect that he might end up in some trouble because of it sometimes?

I also particularly like the way the Beeb has chosen to put ‘attack’ in inverted commas, and refer to it throughout the article simply as an ‘incident’. I’d just be interested now to find out exactly what David McGraths three counts of criminal damage were in relation to. Three different parts of Kilroy? His jacket, tie, and trousers? I don’t know the details of the incident, but three counts seems slightly excessive to me, especially when combined with a public order offence. Though, of course, I do think it’s right that he is punished.

‘Third’ of DVLA car records wrong (BBC News)

Cars would seem a very simple set of items on which to keep a database since, other than ownership details, very little changes from the day they are created to the day they land on the scrap heap. But this report implies that even the registration numbers, which (for the majority of vehicles) do not change over the lifetime of the car are wrong in many cases.

If the Government can’t even manage to keep a correct database of cars, how on Earth am I expected to beleive that it can keep an accurate database of people, which will inevitably have many more variables which change more frequently?

Earlier this month, I wrote to the local council to inform them that me and my housemate were exempt from Council Tax, enclosing the relevant exemption certificates. They then wrote back, requesting my Council Tax. They had applied the certificate, which had my name, date of birth, and address on it, to the wrong account, and so had someone incorrectly registered as exempt, and me incorrectly registered as owing money. Again, this seems a relatively simple process of updating the records of the person whose details are sat in front of you, and yet the council were unable to do this.

If the Government has a proven track record of failures like these, why does anyone trust them to keep an accurate database of information as the back-end to an ID cards system? And is it not worrying that mistakes could easily be made in an apparently ‘infallable’ system, which could lead to terrible consequences for those whose details are wrong?

As I’ve said before, ID cards are unnecessary and I would’ve voted against them. But these recent developments just reminded me how dangerously fallable the system could be.