Guy Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy

Friday, April 22, 2005

This Test Is Actually Useful

The questions seem a bit selective, but it is a handy device from the makers of public whip. Maybe a question about taxes would be helpful?

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Cosmetic Action

BlairWatch has more on Blair’s ‘soft as a baby’s bum’ new look.

According to statistics available from Jeff Bezo’s Alexa.com, which ranks website traffic, the Labour party website is traffic ranked 56,565, which is surprisingly below the ranking of www.Conservatives.com which comes in with a traffic rank 0f 46,684 and the LibDems trail in with a ranking of 66,668.

So despite the humourous John O’Farrell spam, the Tory website is getting more hits. I have heard it suggested that the Tories are using the Voter Vault software to send out targetted messages – council tax to retirees, crime to middle-aged-males, fox hunting to rural voters etc.

Howard Makes Another Policy Up

Guido was watching the Parliament channel yesterday and saw Howard at a Tory organised Forum on Crime. The set was like a studio audience discussion programme, the form being that Howard answers easy questions from what appear to be Tory sympathisers (although the Rastafarian from the Haile Selassie Community thingy, possibly was not). During the discussion Howard advocated the possible imprisonment of the parents of badly behaved kids, but only on weekends, and only if they repeatedly failed to control their offspring. Even the tame Tory chatshow host was a bit taken aback by this – “isn’t that collective punishment?”

The papers don’t seem to have covered this new policy position at all this morning. I see a few practical problems with this policy, such as, who will control the kids on the weekends the parents are locked up for not controlling their kids? The Tories seem to be making policy on the fly…

Furrowed Brow

Bloody Paxman, lets see what he does to Howard on Friday. It was like pulling teeth, no it was worse, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. What would I tell the Panzer Pope about condoms? The audacity of the question, Cherie would kill me – not to mention it would bugger my formal conversion at the Vatican post-PM. Mandy’s right about this, a Catholic Europe will need a Catholic President kinda guy in the future.

Its Mandy’s fault that everywhere I go people are making snide comments, when he said he’d found some poisonous chemicals that would remove my worried furrowed brow, I thought WMD at last! I didn’t realise he was going to inject them into my damned forehead.

Paxo Stuffing

Blair was asked EIGHTEEN TIMES how many illegal immigrants are in Britain — but refused to give a straight answer. Asked to reveal the number of failed asylum seekers, the PM insisted it was “pointless speculating.” Paxo doggedly refused to let it drop, asking for a “rough idea” — then demanding: “Is it tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? Millions?” Blair floundered: “I’ve said, I don’t think there’s any point in speculating. I . . .”

Paxman: “But you have no idea.”
Blair: “Well, it’s not a question of having no idea.”
Paxman: “Prime Minister . . .”
Blair: “. . . and what is the backlog, and we are dealing with all of those issues.”
Paxman: “Prime Minister, you have really no idea of how many failed asylum seekers there are illegally in this country.”
Blair: “I can’t . . .”
Paxman: “You don’t know.”
Blair: “. . . because people are here illegally . . .”
Paxman: “You don’t know.”
Blair: “. . . it is difficult, for the very reason that . . .”
Paxman: “You don’t know.”
Blair: “Hang on, for the very reason that the previous government gave, you cannot determine specifically, how many people are here illegally.”
Paxman: “You have no idea.”
Blair: “What you can say is, here are the number of people that are actually currently applying for asylum . . .”
Paxman: “Yes.”
Blair: “This is the backlog of claims that you’re dealing with. And these are the people who are being removed from the country.”
Paxman: “Do people not come to you and say, we think Prime Minister there may be 100,000 or 200,000 or 50,000 or 500,000.”
Blair: “We . . . it, they, they don’t come and say that, what they . . .”
Paxman: “So you have no idea.”
Blair: “ . . . do say is. No, hang on a minute . . . ”

My advice to Howard is have a sore throat on Friday or crack some joke that blunts any machine-gun rapid-fire question repetition.

Guido was amused to hear Paxman make reference to the “new look” Blair’s visage, who claimed he had just got some sun. Hmmm…

Murdoch Sews Up Channel 5 Licence

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

That Botox Question

The Guardian diary today and yesterday has caught up with Guido on the subject of Tony’s botoxed brow. Back in January Guido mentioned Blair’s before and after look. Minxy Ms Hyde thinks the same.

Candidate Kerry availed himself of the same during his campaign. Anyway judge for yourself, Guido thinks it happened sometime around his New Year holiday, which would give him the excuse to claim “no I’m just looking relaxed after my holiday”. Blair is known to turn up to cabinet meetings in full stage-make-up from close-up TV interviews, he has that typical actor’s vanity.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Conservatives Hold Rome

Its Joseph Ratzinger! Nobody expects the German Inquisition! Takes the name Benedict XVI. First Bush in 2004, now Ratzinger in 2005. There will be much be wailing and weeping from the chattering classes tomorrow. The White House will be pleased.

If Michael Howard were to actually win the general election Guido fears that Harold Pinter would take his own life.