Monday, 26th March 2012

Osborne, the Master Strategist

11:15pm

According to John Rentoul, the combination of the budget and Cam Dine With Me* has shunted Labour into a ten point lead in the opinion polls. Tuesday's Independent/ComRes poll puts Labour on 43% (+3) and the Tories - as you may have worked out by now - on 33% (-4).

How to spin this? 1. It's only one poll. 2. The poll that counts is the general election. 3. Better to take the hit on 50p and Granny-raiding now, not later. 4. This is a verdict on the coalition, not Labour. Voters will change their views when they...

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Jocky Wilson, 1950-2012

8:05pm

Jocky Wilson, who died on Saturday night aged 62, was a very Scottish sporting hero: short, fat and toothless he was touched by equal measures of brilliance and self-destruction. Darts is glitzy now but back in its 1980s pomp it needed no rock music or scantily-clad dancing girls to lend an air of semi-ironic gladiatorial mock-heroism to the action. Especially during the World Champioships, three men made darts compulsive television: Eric Bristow, John Lowe and Jocky Wilson. The supporting cast - featuring "Big Cliff" Lazarenko, Leighton Rees. Keith Deller and...

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Friday, 23rd March 2012

Cameron's Message to the Scottish Tories: Man Up, You Wimps

4:36pm

On the Daily Politics today Andrew Neil asked David Mundell Why are the Scottish Tories so useless? It will not surprise veteran Mundell-watchers that the member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale did not have a great answer to this blunt question. Nevertheless, Mr Neil's question was, in effect, the theme or premise of the Prime Minister's speech to the Scottish Tory Conference this morning.

Much of Mr Cameron's speech was the usual conference boilerplate. All very well and good but not especially meaningful. There was one important passage, however:

I say it's time we stood up even

...

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Bertie Ahern's Greatest Trick: Shaming the Shameless

2:49pm

My friend Ciaran Byrne is right: If Rupert Murdoch owned Fianna Fail he'd close it down. The Mahon Tribunal's report into the flagrant corruption at the heart of the planning process in County Dublin is a very Irish scandal. It is not surprising that senior Fianna Fail politicians were on the take, yet the extent of their corruption remains revelatory. It's GUBU for the Celtic Tiger era.

Now Bertie Ahern, the former Taoiseach once branded "the most skilfull, the most devious, the most cunning of them all" by Charlie Haughey (and he would know!), is set to be...

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The Department of Something Must Be Done & the Drink Police

12:35pm

Even if you accept that the government's plans for a minimum alcohol price in England and Wales are well-intentioned you can be pretty sure that it's a bad idea. How so? Well, the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats each agree that something must be done and this kind of cross-party agreement tends to be a healthy indicator there's bipartisan foolishness afoot.

Alcohol consumption is a complicated phenomenon and the price of drink is only one factor in a story that saw booze consumption fall for decades, rise again towards Victorian levels and then, in the past decade, actually...

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Thursday, 22nd March 2012

Naff Britannia

3:58pm

The Olympic games will, despite everything, be rather fun. This is so even though they will be tediously excessive. The absurdly lavish opening ceremony, for instance, will doubtless be an embarrassment that could have been avoided by keeping it simple. Asking the band of the Grenadier Guards to play a few tunes would have sufficed and been pleasingly British, modest and elegant. It would have offered a nice contrast to the totalitarian excess of the Beijing games.