A Vision of the Future

Summer

What an utter fallacious post? The story is that the ruction was caused by 3 journalists!!! Who were probaly emulating the current fasion for antics in the House of Commons. This includes entertaining activities such as taking photographs of 'sex with the secretary', and letting the cops charge around MP's offices stealing correspondence from constituents!!!

Rhoda Klapp

A lot of us haven't been wondering. We expect business as usual. You know, the thing where the MPs and the journalists are in the club, and we can't even find out what's going on in there except for what the club wants us to know, for to pass on what is in the public's interest would be to risk being thrown out of the cosy club.

Or perhaps I am just too cynical, and it's not like that at all?

libsoc

Just a distraction from commenting the Policy Exchange climbdown on their dodgy receipts

Hugh

The press taking their information dutifully from the PM's spokesman and putting it straight in the paper the hallmark of the early Blair government if you remember. And as for the idea that it's only conservative parties that turn ugly, wasn't there some incident about a party, Ken Livingston, a journalist and a flight of stairs a while back?
This reads like you're auditioning for Labourlist or the Mirror; without being particularly flattering, it's beneath you.

Wily Trout

What distant memory, when? I don't remember any boozing and brawling. How long ago? Have you got false memory syndrome, by any chance?

Steve.W

Silly post Martin, you should have phoned in sick and deft it out for the day then taken you journalism students up the pub.

Hawkeye

Sorry Martin, but you blotted your copybook with this one. It marks you out as an unthinking labour drone. You have totally disregarded what IS known in order to indulge yourself in a mudslinging exercise against the tories.
.
We know that
1. It was a reception for journalists
2. Some guests, AFTER, leaving had an argument
3. The argument moved away from the reception
4. The police intervened and gassed an individual
.
Now, given those, please tell me how members of the press having barney in the corridor and getting jugged by PC Plod means that the tories are about to trash the HoC.
.
Please Martin, I would be fascinated to how you got to your conclusions based on what is already known.

Michael Sweeney

'A lot of us have been wondering what Westminster might be like under the Tories. What, for instance, would the parliamentary press lobby look like under a Cameron government?'

Kinda sums up the navel gazing of the Westminster Village, doesn't it? Forget the country, what's the impact on the press lobby? Think I'd better get back to Guido's blog.

Michael Booth

Let's end the whole business of professional MPs - the oxbridge politics grads who work as researchers then get a seat then place their spouses in secure positions - it all resembles the placemen under Walpole 300 years ago...
Let's reclaim politics for ordinary people - put a limit on the number of times anyone can sit and make it mandatory to select as an MP someone who has had a career...outside politics!

Alf Tupper

Westminster under the Tories?

No change.

The economy would stay in ruins; our manufacturing base would continue to be stripped out for short term gain; unemployment would continue to rise whilst the figures are manipulated in new and creative ways.

All the while, immigrants will continue to arrive unabated, the public will be re-assured at intervals that plans are being drawn up to stem the influx and should be in place in about six years hence. Always hence.

This made possible courtesy of the media midriff which insists that any sentiment which seeks to look after our own people, is dangerous.

Why is it so?

Oscar India

What a dim-witted and crappy thing to write. One assumes you're now aware that the people at the heart of this were from a govt-sponsored publishing house in Islington which concentrates on HIV and student issues and had been invited to talk to the Tories about reaching traditionally non-Tory audiences?
I have always enjoyed your writing, but this is a "conclusion without the facts" piece of dross and you ought to admit your mistake and apologise.
Of course, like your dear leader, you won't.

Martin Bright

Oh dear. I wasn't being serious. I agree it wasn't my most thoughtful post. but it was more of a slur on the lobby than Eric Pickles or the Conservative Party as it turns out. As you may have noticed I suggested that the lobby in the Tory years was both compliant and pugilistic. I'm sure it was a bit of both but mostly neither.

Rhoda Klapp

Sorry Martin, this is like reading the papers on April fools day and trying to distinguish the actual hoaxes from the weird but true stories saved up for the occasion. So this was a joke.

Time to come clean about that New Deal thing too?

Oscar India

Martin - fair play to you for responding. However, you may have intended it as more of a slur on the Lobby than the Tories, but as no Lobby hacks and no Tories were involved, I suggest your dart fell somewhat short, no?