The Daily Telegraph has not exactly covered itself in glory. All those barbs about how it lifted Guido's story without attributing the source must have hurt. I have just read Guidos' rebuttal, and it is very good.

That is why a lot of the MSM are scared of the man otherwise known as Paul Staines. I have known Paul as a casual acquaintance in the libertarian scene since the 1990s and he has always struck me as very upfront about his activities. So he used to organise young raves? Excellent.

We are asked to believe that all these NuLab characters were joyless swots in their yoof, touching nothing more powerful than a pint of piss-lager and reading Viz comics for the odd cheap thrill. What a pathetic bunch of bastards they are.

And now we have the tampered with ballet box and Georgia Gould... Just saw it on the telly whilst reading Brian's piece.

I just can't wait to be shot of this bunch of Broons, Hoons and Loons.

JP

My reaction when reading that (actually not too bad and quite informative) Telegraph piece about Guido was that I can remember when there used to be backbench MPs like this. And the HofC was a far better place for it.

If they were trying to make Guido look bad, they failed miserably.

I value our democracy, such as it is, very highly and so regard ballott rigging to be the worst of crimes. What is the penalty in law for vote fixing can anyone here tell me? How likely, if proof emerges that vote rigging has taken place, is it that anyone will be prosecuted for it?

I remember being pretty appalled when the original selection process for a candidate for London Mayor was fixed by pretending that Frank Dobson had won instead of Ken Livingstone. It appears I was not alone in my disapproval as Ken won the post by standing as an independant and was kicked out of the Labour party for his trouble. Surely it is a cornerstone of democracy that you are not always going to get the result that you would like, but you make a commitment to abide by the result nevertheless.

The prediction business is tricky, but like a cult leader each time you are proved wrong, you get more certain.
I think we must be getting close though, but i think the economy tanking completely will cause the downfall of Brown.
We should have a clearer idea after the budget. If the markets don't believe it, that could be the long awaited trigger.
Roll on the public lynching, Brown, quangocrats, senior policeman, data gatherers, council chiefs, hospital managers......Of all the countries that have risen up and overthrown their corrupt elite, has any had a longer list than us?

Brian, good analogy with predicting moves in the stock market. Some economists had predicted the recent credit crunch, looking at all the data on monetary growth, debt, etc, but the trick is the inflection point. Come to that, a debate is now raging in the economics profession as to when the stock market starts a sustained rally, or when inflation begins to take off. Hold onto your hats.

Now a lot of core labour voters will wonder why they should vote for a party which has attack dogs who savage Labour MPs and other Labour ministers. my dear mamma was a socialist and always voted Labour. She became quite disgusted by their antics and last time she voted when she lived oop T'North, she voted BNP!!!

50 year labour veteran and former MP Alice Mahon has quit ZANULabour in digust.

Be careful what you wish for Brian.

To use you analogy; markets usually recover fairly quickly from sharp and sudden collapse e.g. 1987, dot com etc. It takes a long bear market punctuated by futile rallies to totally destroy confidence.

So it might be worth hoping that new lab recovers a bit from this - only - to get dammed by another revalation again and again.

Just remember it takes more than one nail to seal a coffin.

Being on the other side of the Atlantic, I think I missed something that happened over there. Can someone explain or post a link explaining this "ballot box tampering"? Mind you, I'm not shocked by such. After all, as an American I know that our electoral system cannot be trusted to deliver a result reflecting actual votes cast; what with huge numbers of bogus registrations used by the Democrats to vote unchecked absentee ballots, no proof that the person voting is the person registered or if the registration reflects a real person, voting by illegal aliens, and vote counting procedures that are run by the Democrats [who seem to regularly "find" pre-stuffed ballot boxes in their cars and homes during recounts]. I did find it interesting that Detroit now has more registered voters than it has men, women, children, and household pets.

In any case, what happened along this line in Britain; and is there any sort of outrage outside the Brit blogosphere?

Subotai Bahadur

I just don't see Gordon going at this point in time. The tipping point resides with the Cabinet, and their collective loyalty to the Prime Minister.

Given Gordon's staying power, and bloody hell, he is glued to power, it will require direct evidence and a party that is willing to take on the fight to unseat him.

My concern: Brown is an unstable character who refuses to be prised from No. 10 even by his bitten nails. If he is backed far enough into a corner, and if it is clear that the political process offers him no options to maintain power, will he take action to change the game in his favour?

Phillip Chaston.
Like Hitler Did?

Interestingly under Blairs reign, he tried to sneak through a bill to allow him to bypass parliment if circumstances required (basically, if he felt like it). I only heard about it because I belong to the National Secular Society and the Motorcycle Action Group and they both saw fit to mention it in their newsletters. The mainstream media, as far as I am aware, completely ignored it. I believe that backbench MPs not wanting to be relieved of what little power they have left, stopped it in its tracks.

Statutory Instruments are bad enough as it is. Power enough if you ask me.