Politicians Category
Politicans and world leaders making news and in the news, and spouting hot air
Gordon Brown Would Do Anything For More
JUST when you thought school could not get any worse, the Mirror announces: “FREE SCHOOL MEAL FOR EVERY PUPIL.”
Says Labour MP Sharon Hodgson said: “This is just the type of big bold thinking we need to secure a fourth term. In many schools, children roam the streets at lunchtimes, which is often bad news for local residents and good news for the chippy or burger bars.”
Vote Labour and say “No” to lunchtime trade. That’s the small business vote secured.
Ms Hodgson goes on: “It’s just over a century since the School Meals Act in 1906, which aimed to ensure children were not too hungry to concentrate.”
It’s 1906 and all that. No central heating in those halcyon days of rumbaba and rickets. Turn off the generator. Make it cold and so improve the students’ powers of concentration
“We now need to ensure that not only does no child go hungry but their food is healthy. All children get a desk, pencils and pens and a teacher. They should also get lunch, it’s as fundamental as that.”
What about desks sprayed with a Vitamin Varnish, quills plucked from organic hens, pencils fashioned from carrot sticks and a teacher who brings in an apple a day for her class?
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Posted: 1st, April 2008 | In: Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (7)
Gordon Brown Wants Silence At Liverpool’s Kop Shop
IN “FURY ACROSS THE MERSEY”, the Sun leads with news that cops are to “police abusive fans at Kop derby”.
The “Kop derby” is, of course, last weekend’s match between Liverpool and their city rivals Everton.
Things were said to the players by the fans. Cruel things. Things the Sun will not lower itself to repeat.
But relief from harsh words is on the way as Prime Minister Gordon Brown “joined the debate”* about “appalling behaviour at football matches by backing The Sun’s Shut It! Campaign”.
The Sun’s front-page news is, rightly, the Sun’s campaign.
Gordon Brown who writes for the sun almost weekly, says: “We all know children imitate the behaviour they see from adults, whether it’s good or bad, and especially from their sporting heroes.”
He’s right. We’ve lost count of the number of children we see gulping for air between words, bankrolling an iffy war in Iraq and selling off the country’s gold reserves at a fraction of their worth.
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Posted: 1st, April 2008 | In: Back pages, Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (11)
Barack Obama And Gun Control
BARACK Obama and the land of the gun:
During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion– positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he’s projected during his presidential campaign.
The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.
Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire.
They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize(d) his position.”
But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago non-profit group that issued it. And it found that Obama – the day after sitting for the interview – filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes adding to one answer.
Guns don’t kill people; legislation kills people…
Posted: 31st, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment (1)
Hillary Clinton Standing Before Photo Ops
HILLARY Clinton is standing. But no one tells her. No one moves her to one side. But she’s not alone…
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Posted: 31st, March 2008 | In: Photojournalism, Politicians | Comment (1)
The BritBlog RoundUp
THE BritBlog RoundUp, as compiled by Philobiblon:
Our own Matt Wardman has instituted roundups of the Scottish, Welsh and Westminster parliament. Given the government’s sudden desperate enthusiasm for constitutional reform, how long before there’s a “English” to add to the collection?
And Amused Cynicism has turned serious to back a campaign to get parliamentary bills published in an accessible form. Whatever will these supporters of democracy think of next?!
Perhaps serious analysis of bills, as Spy Blog has done to the Draft Governance of Britain – Constitutional Renewal Bill. It is your democracy the Spy is trying to defend, so you really should read this.
Because of course legislation is the solution to all problems, as Feminist Avatar notes on An Open Letter by a Feminist about suggestions that the legal drinking age in Scotland be raised to 21.
Elsewhere in politics:
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- * My heart sank when directed to a post making comparisons to Nazis (usually not a good sign of sensible argument), but on Prison Law Inside Out, the jailhouselawyer assembles an account of our disappearing civil liberties.
- * Blood & Treasure looks back to the Eighties with fond nostalgia – not for the music but the personal freedom.
- * A short sharp take on how the terminal five kerfuffle could enter the Guinness Book of Records.
- * What would really doing something about child poverty cost? Antonia has some calculations.
Keep your suggestions coming…
Posted: 31st, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
Carnival Of The Libertarians
Carnival of the Libertarians on liberty…
Posted: 31st, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
Clinton, Obama And Wikipedia
Clinton and Obama fight it out on Wikipedia
Posted: 30th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
Carla Bruni, Sakorzy And The Randy Tabloid Freebie
ROB Grainge writes for freebie London newspaper No.23891, The London Paper. He has interviewed Carla Bruni, Nicolas Sarkozy’s pleasure boat.
“Modelling is using the body and only the body”, says Bruni, interviews last year when she was another jobbing model-celebrity-singer.
Says Grainge: “And you have a beautiful one, I might add.”
“Thank you,” she stutters, laughing. I’m clearly a sleazebag. Professionalism is dwindling. She then compares making music to the process of attraction.“When you’re attracted to someone, it’s hard to explain, you can say you’re attracted to this girl ’cause she is pretty, intelligent and charming…”
“You have all those qualities, Carla,” I interrupt to gush. “Thank you, I’m liking this interview very much,” she says. “You’re almost like an Italian man.”
The kind of Italian mum who pinches you goose’s your sister and lives with his mum.
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Posted: 28th, March 2008 | In: Celebrities, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment (1)
Not Obama Not Clinton But Al Gore And The Al Goreans
AL Gore and the Al Goreans are massing:
They’ll pick one of their own superdelegates, Al Gore, Mr. Party Elder, Mr. Nobel Prize, Mr.
I-Got-Screwed-Out-of-Victory-Last-Time and Mr.
Trust-Me-the-Globe-Really-Is-Round-and-Warming and I’m finally gonna get a chance to do something about it from the White House. The Draft Gore folks will be ecstatic and the Democratic blogosphere is already excited.
Gore – the man who lost to Bush…
Posted: 28th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comments (3)
Vote Joanna Lumley For English Democrats
JOANNA Lumley is stading for political office.
Chaps of a certain age will visualise La Lumley with that shocking 70s haircut that she sported in ‘The New Avengers’ (the last British series to be networked in the States, apparently) , others will think of her as in that dire comedy with the one of French & Saunders not married to Lenny Henry. Doubtless there are other options, but there she is in the list for the English Democrats, at #9.
It would appear that there are two Lumleys, and this one looks to be quite youthful, so I would think that either her parents refused to have a television or had a sadistic streak. Unless she changed it herself, of course.
I think it is fair to say she will not get elected this time.
Posted: 28th, March 2008 | In: Celebrities, Politicians | Comment
Police Raid In Islington: Sarkozy And Brown Not Arrested
NICOLAS Sarkozy and Gordon Brown are palying football at Arsenal.
The two men toyed with the ball. Both resisted any urge to play head tennis, which always ends in shame for the politico.
It was a simple game of pass and don’t move. Sarko didn’t nutmeg Brown. And Brown didn’t smack the ball into the stands with the cry “‘Ave it!”. How we would have warmed to him had only he done so.
To one side, Arsene Wenger, Arsenal’s erudite manager, looked statesmanlike and in charge.
Meanwhile, about half a mile away, about 600 bobbies in blue boiler suits are yomping down Blackstock Road. It’s the Mail’s “Operation Overkill”. It’s a swoop on drug dealing, money laundering and selling fake documents.
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Posted: 28th, March 2008 | In: Photojournalism, Politicians | Comments (3)
Max Wank In German Politics
VOTE Max Wank for a better life in Germany:
Posted: 28th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comments (2)
Earn Big And Work For The State
Over 800 town hall employees make more than £100,000 a year. Some even make more than Polly, if you can believe that.
Posted: 28th, March 2008 | In: Money, Politicians | Comment (1)
Sarkozy Kisses Carla Bruni On The Pleasure Boat
MORE news on Nicholas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, France’s answer to Lembit Opik MP and his Cheeky Girl.
“JE THAMES,” puns the Sun, showing its readers a picture of the topless stunna and his girlfriend canoodling on a boat down the Thames.
“Over here, Kermit,” cry the tabloid paparazzi from the river bank. “Bombs away,” scream the schoolchildren from Westminster Bride as they give full throat to the entente cordiale.
Mrs Sarkozy is soon back on dry land. She is the Mail’s “lady in rouge”, which is Frenglish for Lady in Red, which is a song in which singer Chris de Burgh rhymes “dance” with “romance”.
France is Britain. And Britain is France. This is all “crazy”. The Independent looks on as “Britain went made for France’s first lady”.
Or as Le Parisien newspaper puts it in more sophisticated tones: “Les Anglais conquis par Carla” (The English charmed by Carla).
And of Mr Sarkozy, La Bruni’s little sultana?
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Posted: 28th, March 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (6)
I Schtupped Eliot Spitzer
ELIOT Spitzer and ablonde. Well, at least he like variety…
Posted: 27th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
When Nevada Politicans Go Bad: Jan Schaefer Vs Vera Robles Dewitt
HERE’S a video of Carson Public Works Commission Chairman Jan Schaefer at a Carson City Council meeting. Mayor Jim Dear wants Vera Robles Dewitt (the assailant, and owner of Carson Bail Bonds) arrested…
She’s been struck in the “eye”…
Remember this..?
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Posted: 27th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comments (3)
The Abolition Of Parliament Bill Revived
Danger ! Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill Part 6 tries to remove even the limited constitutional safeguards of the “destroy Parliament” Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006
We were going to comment initially on the
Draft Governance of Britain – Constitutional Renewal Bill (.pdf 98 pages)
regarding the welcome plan to repeal sections 132 to 138 of the Serious Organised Crime Act 2005, which has chilled free speech and freedom of assembly in the over large Designated Area around Parliament Square and Millbank and Whitehall etc. – see the Parliament Protest blog
This repeal appears prominently as Part 1 Clause 1 of the draft Bill, however, any joy at this proposed return to the status quo ante, is marred by Part 6 of the Bill,
It looks as if we will have to again go through all the fuss and lobbying that we saw over the wretched Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, the previous attempt by this Labour Government to neuter Parliament by Order of a Minister.
See the Save Parliament website as a reminder of the dangers to our Parliamentary democracy from the executive branch of Government, which seem to be looming, yet again.
Lumme!
Posted: 27th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
On Politics And Competence
On Politics And Competence:
One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.
Posted: 27th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment (1)
Marina Litvinenko Wants Justice
ALEXANDER Litvinenko’s wife Marina wants a full inquest int her husband’s death:
Officials at the highest levels at the Kremlin have insinuated that my husband’s friends in London killed him “in order to smear Russia”. In a scam worthy of the old KGB, a fringe American journalist was invited to Moscow for an interview with Russian prosecutors, who showed him the British extradition papers – the ones that I am not allowed to see. His “conclusion” – that my husband poisoned himself while smuggling radioactive material for terrorists – was published in a third-rate New York newspaper and then trumpeted in Russia as an American-sourced report. I have to protect my husband’s good name from such dirty tricks. A full inquest would put an end to these kind of smear campaigns.
What odds on that happening?
Posted: 27th, March 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians | Comment (1)
Scaling The Heights: When Carla Bruni And Prince Philip’s Eyes Met
NICOLAS Sarkozy is sharing the platform (heels) with Her Majesty, Prince Philip and Carla Bruni.
La Bruni is not with Phil but the Guardian’s front-page picture of her looking at the Queen’s consort, a smile playing across her lips, suggests she longs to be. While Philip smiles broadly, Carla’s eyes sparkle. Sarkozy is looking into the camera, a man unnerved.
The Telegraph’s snips Sarkozy away and features only Phil’s noble profile and Bruni’s gaze. “Britain is enchanted by Madame Sarkozy,” says the Express on its cover. And Madame Sarkozy is enchanted by a Briton.
On the Times’ cover, Bruni is with Her Majesty, who is talking and pointing something out. But Carla has only eyes for Liz, her head a whirl of what hold this woman has over Philip, and how it can be slackened.
As the paper’s headline says: “When the Queen met Madame le President”. It’s a Lloyd-George-knew-my-father moment.
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Posted: 27th, March 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comments (2)
La Pequeña Hillary Clinton Is Hillary Clinton
HILLARY Clinton can remember when she was a little person, just like you pequena…
Footage of Hillary opening Live Aid coming next…
Posted: 26th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
The Queen Brings Sarkozy To Elevated Heels
HER Majesty is meeting with M. Sarkozy:
All this is dressed up in glowing terms as, “a new Franco-British brotherhood,” with Nick telling us that we ought to get together as “we have the same enemies throughout the world.” Not quite right is that.
He forgot to count the French.
Posted: 26th, March 2008 | In: Politicians, Royal Family | Comments (2)
Political Quotes Of The Day: Hillary Clinton Is Human
HOW does Hillary Clinton spin a lie, or a mistook?
Says she: “So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation.”
Barack Obama should forgive her. Afte all, to err is human, to forgive divine…
Posted: 26th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
Barack Obama Challenges Hillary For The Heather Mills Vote
WHILE Hillary Clinton goes for the Heather Mills vote, Barack Obama ia giving a speech commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the march on Selma, Alabama. Barack Obama was aged 3:
What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House who said, “You know, we’re battling Communism. How are we going to win hearts and minds all across the world?
If right here in our own country, John, we’re not observing the ideals set fort in our Constitution, we might be accused of being hypocrites.” So the Kennedy’s decided we’re going to do an air lift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.
This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child.
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Posted: 26th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment (1)
Hillary Clinton Raises The Titantic And Remembers Live Aid
THE New England Historic Genealogical Society says Barack Obama is related to President Bush I and II, Gerald R. Ford, Lyndon B. Johnson, Harry S. Truman and James Madison.
He is also related to Brad Pitt because a common ancestor lived 11 generations ago.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is the ninth cousin twice removed of Angelina Jolie, with whom she saved
D. Brenton Simons, president of the 163-year-old genealogical society, also notes that Mrs. Clinton is also related to:
Jack Kerouac (co-author of On The Road With Hill and Bill)
Madonna (with whom Hillary appeared at Live Aid)
Celine Dion (without whom Hillary could not have raised the Titanic)
Alanis Morissette (You Oughta Know – Linda Tripp mix)
Camilla Parker-Bowles – an infamous mistress and therfore not in the least bit like Hillary
Hillary Clinton is 29.
Posted: 26th, March 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
