Saturday, April 23, 2005
New blogs
New Bloggers
The blogosphere population is growing again with a huge rise in the number of political blogs dedicated to the election, the mainstream guys have finally caught on. New this week have been three "official" campaign blogs, Tony Blair's Campaign Diary, Kennedy Campaign.org, and Sandra Howard's Campaign Diary.
The first two are written by assigned hacks travelling with the leaders' teams, whilst Sandra Howard's is written by herself, and of the three it is the most readable by a country mile. I've added links to them all in the sidebar.
I had added some comments to Charles Kennedy's blog about the farcical situation where the Lib-dem Councillors in South Tyneside continually support Labour and voted for a 4.9% increase in Council Tax here, whilst Kennedy was calling for it's abolition. I questioned whether they were ever going to oppose Labour rather than be it's surrogate. Strangely, by the end of the day, my comments had been deleted from the blog - so much for democratic engagement!
In South Shields, as with many constituencies where the sitting member enjoys a large majority, the campaign remains lacklustre and deadpan boring, this election is being fought exclusively in the marginals. I worry that turnout on May 5th. will be poor. We did see a photo opportunity in the Shields Gazette last night featuring the independant candidate Nader A-Naderi and Alan Brown (see my previous post on the subject) and there was a notification of the meeting on Sunday evening at Westoe Road Baptist Church, to which all candidates have been invited. I think I should go along, if only to find out how many others attend.
The immigration issue has had no impact at all here, which is not surprising, we have lived with a mixed populace for centuries and we all get along very nicely here, it appears to be having some impact in other areas which have seen recent influxes of immigrants or asylum seekers, but I worry that the Tories may have overplayed this card. If they wish to close the gap with Labour they need to shift the focus firmly onto taxation, government spending, health, and crime; areas which surely will have far more meaning to the average joe in the street. We need to see statements that indicate how different our lives might be under a new government, but unfortunately Mr. Howard's team don't appear to be showing him as a Prime Minister in waiting but more like the journeyman challenger to a longstanding heavyweight boxing champion.
There are still two weeks to go, so perhaps someone can stir up the electorate with something a little bit special.
_________________________________________________________________
The blogosphere population is growing again with a huge rise in the number of political blogs dedicated to the election, the mainstream guys have finally caught on. New this week have been three "official" campaign blogs, Tony Blair's Campaign Diary, Kennedy Campaign.org, and Sandra Howard's Campaign Diary.
The first two are written by assigned hacks travelling with the leaders' teams, whilst Sandra Howard's is written by herself, and of the three it is the most readable by a country mile. I've added links to them all in the sidebar.
I had added some comments to Charles Kennedy's blog about the farcical situation where the Lib-dem Councillors in South Tyneside continually support Labour and voted for a 4.9% increase in Council Tax here, whilst Kennedy was calling for it's abolition. I questioned whether they were ever going to oppose Labour rather than be it's surrogate. Strangely, by the end of the day, my comments had been deleted from the blog - so much for democratic engagement!
In South Shields, as with many constituencies where the sitting member enjoys a large majority, the campaign remains lacklustre and deadpan boring, this election is being fought exclusively in the marginals. I worry that turnout on May 5th. will be poor. We did see a photo opportunity in the Shields Gazette last night featuring the independant candidate Nader A-Naderi and Alan Brown (see my previous post on the subject) and there was a notification of the meeting on Sunday evening at Westoe Road Baptist Church, to which all candidates have been invited. I think I should go along, if only to find out how many others attend.
The immigration issue has had no impact at all here, which is not surprising, we have lived with a mixed populace for centuries and we all get along very nicely here, it appears to be having some impact in other areas which have seen recent influxes of immigrants or asylum seekers, but I worry that the Tories may have overplayed this card. If they wish to close the gap with Labour they need to shift the focus firmly onto taxation, government spending, health, and crime; areas which surely will have far more meaning to the average joe in the street. We need to see statements that indicate how different our lives might be under a new government, but unfortunately Mr. Howard's team don't appear to be showing him as a Prime Minister in waiting but more like the journeyman challenger to a longstanding heavyweight boxing champion.
There are still two weeks to go, so perhaps someone can stir up the electorate with something a little bit special.
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Curly Born in 1956
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