Shrum's own words

4:34pm

Daniel Finkelstein has the scoop on the debt owed by Gordon Brown's speech to Bob Shrum:

"First of all there are plenty of phrases pretty directly lifted from speeches made by Shrum clients, many of which he admits he wrote. Here are just a few, there may well be many more:

Al Gore 2000 nomination acceptance speech: I know my own imperfections. I know that sometimes people say I'm too serious, that I talk too much substance and policy.

Gordon Brown: Sometimes people say I am too serious and I fight too hard and maybe that's true......

Al Gore 2000 nomination acceptance speech: I pledge to you tonight: I will work for you every day and I will never let you down. "

Gordon Brown: This is my pledge to the British people: I will not let you down.

John Kerry 2004 nomination acceptance speech: And what can I say about Teresa?  She has the strongest moral compass of anyone I know

Gordon Brown: And this is my moral compass

Bill Clinton's State of the Union 1995: As we move into this next century, everybody matters; we don't have a person to waste.

Gordon Brown: This is the century where our country cannot afford to waste the talents of anyone

Then there's the structure. So many Shrum speeches begin with a story about the candidate's mother and father and what they taught him. So did Brown on Monday. And the pointing out John Smeaton was straight out of a Clinton State of the Union speech."

Danny ends by saying:

The only way in which this wasn't a Shrum speech? It wasn't good enough.

There's another difference from the usual Shrum speeches. This one is for a Presidential client (well, Prime Ministerial, but you get the drift) who's going to win. 

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Spreading affection for the US

1:48pm

A friend in Guangzhou, China reports that the US consulate has a videotape that runs on a loop on several monitors, to tell Chinese applicants about the procedure for getting a US visa. In the section on fingerprinting, it says:

Do not move until the American tells you that it is OK.

Culturally sensitive, eh?

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Mitt for me

1:13pm

It seems I'm a Romney man. 

According to this calculator, I'm an 83.33% match.

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It's not funny. Really, it's not.

9:29am

Not the model way to conduct an interview on medical malpractice:

UPDATE: Too good to be true. It seems it's a sketch from a Dutch comedy show. Oh well. And it's still funny.

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The toxic madness of the public sector

10:41pm

There's a promising new blog, Legitimate Tangent: the anonymous insider story of a public sector manager. As he writes in his first post:

There comes a time when the only right thing to do for your psychological health is somehow pour out online the toxic madness you absorb each day when you come to work as I do inside that shuddering monster, the public sector.

A bit about me: I'm nearly 40 (there's a clue to this blog in that too), live in a nice bit of England where you send your caravans every summer and work in a senior(ish) role for a Government criminal justice agency. Which is three Oxymorons already.

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Monks' purpose

10:37pm

As Harry's Place points out:

Given the criticism it has been receiving in recent times, events in Burma are a timely reminder that religion can indeed be a power for good.

Is there a more remarkable woman in the world than Aung San Suu Kyi?

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I'm back

10:37pm

Apologies for the absence of posts - frustratingly,  the site has been down all day. It's back now.

UPDATE: The perils of writing too quickly. Tim Worstall rightly points the pointlessness of that comment: 

Thanks for that Stephen. If I hadn’t been able to read the site I wouldn’t have known it was back.

What I should have written is that the posting software was down. The site was up, but it looked as if I couldn't be bothered to post. I could, but it wouldn't let me! 

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One, two, three...

6:27pm

This (from Comment Central) you have to love:

Good story from government minister Liam Byrne at a Demos fringe meeting this morning, down here at Labour Party conference.

Canvassing together with the Scottish dynamo Ian McCartney in his constituency, the pair encountered a typical local resident from this high ethnic minority area.

McCartney kicked off, talking his way through the traditional canvassing script, only to be met with a blank stare. So the local party chairman was called over and tried again, this time in Urdu, but with similar lack of success. A third attempt is made, this time in Punjabi. More blank staring.

Finally the woman says: "Don't any of you speak English?"

 

 

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Talking to Hamas

2:05pm

Israel is now talking to Hamas. And, as a result, many innocent lives have been saved. 

The talking was, of course, done by Shin Bet operatives, and was with the head of Hamas in Nablus, Niad Shakrit, who was arrested on Thursday night. 

That's the kind of talking Israel needs more of, involving the arrest of terrorist organisers.

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Oooh, an election. Yawn. Gimme the policies!

8:48am

I'm back: Yom Kippur is over, I have eaten (too much) and it's pouring - so it's time to resume posting.

I can't make up my mind if I am excited by the prospect of being on the other side of the world if there is indeed an autumn election (we'll be honeymooning in Australia) or frustrated that I'll be away from the action. 

I was away for much of the 2001 campaign and can't say I regretted it. Given that I am a political obsessive, I have a strange attitude to elections. They are supposed to set the pulses racing and all that. But I find them dull. (Don't get me wrong - the act of putting an X in the ballot box is still thrilling and, in its way, moving, given how lucky we are to live in a free society.) The campaigning is so puerile and the set piece interviews so formulaic, I just metaphorically close my eyes for the duration of the campaigns and will them to be over asap. And I positively loath the election-night parties that one gets invited too. I now just stay at home and have fun flicking over the channels all night.

For me, it's not elections which are exciting. It's what happens in between - governing and policy. Give me a White Paper on NHS reform or a study of City Academies and I'm purring with pleasure. 

I guess that's why I find the current torrent of speculation over the date of the election mind-numbingly tedious. My eyes glaze over when I see a headline like this: 

Election fever rages as Gordon Brown's lead grows. 

Not in this part of Finchley it doesn't.

For what it's worth, though, I think Mr Brown would be bonkers not to call an election now. He knows the lie of the land; who knows how things will look in May? 

The only argument I can think of for holding back is that, with every passing day, David Cameron looks less of a potential PM and more of an unprincipled PR lightweight. The more I see of him, the more my dislike grows. 

And - backed by my entirely unscientific survey of the people with whom I broke the fast on Saturday night - he's already regarded with derision. So why wait any longer,Mr B?

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