12:05pm
There's a particularly stupid piece in the Guardian today by Ian Jack, based on this premise:
Next week 7 million Londoners may wake to discover Boris Johnson is their mayor. Some time before the summer of 2010 60 million UK citizens may discover that David Cameron is their prime minister. If you live in London as I do that means living under a double yoke of old Etonians.
That's the problem with elections, Mr Jack. You get who you - or someone else - voted for.
I'm sick of reading about how awful it is that old Etonians are involved in politics. So what? Why is it worse than having alumni of Bog Standard Comprehensive in Inner City Wasteland? Doesn't the calibre of the man or woman. and what they are offering, count?
Then again, Jack asks the right question but in the blinkered, stupid way of so many of his...
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11:17am
Poor old Kevin! This is in today's Guardian:
Keegan insists he is in charge and confirms Modric interest
Keegan is certainly interested in Modric, the 22-year-old Dinamo Zagreb playmaker, but he wants to take a closer look before any deal is struck. He said: "If you are looking at a young midfield player who has got a fantastic future ahead of him, Modric is one of them. But then every other club in the league, from Arsenal and Manchester United, would like Modric."
Er, you're a bit slow off the mark, matey, as
this announcement on the Spurs website makes clear:
The Club is delighted to announce that it has reached agreement with Dinamo Zagreb for the transfer of Croatian midfielder, Luka Modric. Personal terms have been agreed with the player and he will now undertake a medical and apply for a work permit.
Mind you, if...
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11:50am
Did you see Question Times last night? (It'shere, if you'd like to watch it.) Iain Dale is in despair over the quality of debate. I'd certainly agree that it's not even close to the level of US primary debates, but I thought last night's was one of the more useful and informative hustings. Not because it was an elevated discussion of policy - policy was barely present - but because it was hugely instructive about the candidates themselves.
For one thing, I realised that Brian Paddick is a truly awful man. He came across as the worst kind of ego-maniac - the sort who thinks he is humble and a cut above the rest of his peers when in reality he is boorish, snide, ignorant and self-important. At least Ken and Boris know they have high opinions of themselves and don't pretend to be otherwise. And Paddick was...
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3:20pm
There's a useful corrective here to the lie that Gaza is the most crowded place on Earth:
The UK politician George Galloway wrote in The Glasgow Record last month that the Gaza Strip is "the most densely populated piece of earth on the planet." Galloway wrote that 1.5 million Palestinians live there. Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist currently teaching at Princeton, wrote March 26 that Gaza is "one of the most densely populated places on earth, with 3,823 people per square kilometre." Kuttab's figure is in line with recent Gaza population estimates of 1.4 million.
If Galloway's estimate of 1.5 million Gaza population is correct, this is almost 4,200 people per square kilometer. The Central Intelligence Agency projects that the Gaza population will reach 1,537,269 in July. This would bring the density to 4,270 people per square kilometer.
But this isn't even as crowded as Tel Aviv. Gaza had plenty...
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11:20am
A friend who has been working on the Boris campaign tells me this story from the Back Boris Call Centre in Holborn other night, which was apparently manned by "a shoestring number of Tory boys fromn CCHQ and random - very random - volunteers.
At one point, a Boris caller was heard heckling a 90-something invalid old lady about the need to register for a proxy vote by (yesterday) 23rd of April. Not recognising the names of any of the candidates the caller read out to her, the sparky old dear mentioned she was plumping for the dashing candidate with the "floppy white hair".
The Boris worker flicked on speaker phone to his fellow workers who were in tears of laughter in time for the dear lady to chide: "He's gorgeous, and I'd like to see more of him..."
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