With the yoof taking to the streets, it was only a matter of time before riot chic became the new look. Those sages at Vice Style have compiled some uprising suggestions:

(click to enlarge)

They can come and smash up Guido’s HQ anytime…

Labour rent-a-quote Lisa Nandy MP is fast becoming a blog favourite. The member for Wigan has found herself facing an onslaught of questions from the Tories concerning her staffer, Lisa Johnson, who is a political officer for the militant hard left University and Colleges Union. The problem for Nandy is the fact she is on the Education Select Committee and therefore her staffer is highly likely to be privy to information about legislation that she can pass back to her other employer. Just imagine if it was an oil company and the Energy Select Committee…

Tory MP Gavin Williamson has sent an exhaustive list of questions concerning:

• Whether any parliamentary expenses are being used to pay a union official to carry out union work.
• Whether the UCU is being given special access to confidential information reserved for members of the Education Select Committee.
• Whether parliamentary mechanisms, such as written questions and select committee proceedings, are being used to promote the UCU’s agenda.
• Whether the substantial number of UCU officials who have backed violent and illegal forms of protest now have a direct line to parliament.

Given the UCU are organising riots outside Parliament, how does Nandy feel it’s appropriate to have an organiser inside in such a sensitive position?

It’s a tough life being the New Statesman’s “voice of a generation”, but luckily Laurie Penny – our  favourite privately educated revolutionary who learnt about the hard knocks of life at Wadham College, Oxford – has found the solution to all her problems. Hire some help. She is advertising for an intern to help her with a book, which due to media demands she doesn’t have time to commit to herself. If only she spent more time typing instead of rioting…

The job is to “find statistics and quotes and case studies, talk over what I’m writing and hunt down sources and stories for me, and keep meticulous notes of all sources in academic format.” For this the lowly researcher will be paid the grand sum of £500 for 85 hours work. As a fearless left-wing campaigner for higher living standards for the workers surely Laurie must know that £5.88 per hour is short of the minimum wage and far from the “living wage” she publicly supports (£7.85). Apparently the job would  “suit someone who is currently out of work, working part-time, or parenting”. What planet is she on that she thinks parents can afford childcare on £5.88 per hour?

Even more controversial than the flouting of minimum wage legislation is her contempt for sexual equality legislation. She clearly states: “I’m probably looking for a female researcher”. The EHRC clearly says: “Stating a preference for a man or woman in a job advertisement is unlawful sex discrimination unless the requirements of the particular job mean that it is lawful to employ only a man or a woman”. Form an orderly queue…

UPDATE : Should point out for the sake of completeness that Penny’s practical understanding of unpaid internships was cushioned by the fact that she was lucky enough to have an inheritance to rely on when she was starting out in the media. Not everyone has that advantage…

While the numbers were greatly exaggerated, last night could not have been fun for Culture Secretary and apparently secret Murdoch stooge, Jeremy Hunt, as his talk to LSE was stormed by some rather well spoken protesters:

What they were protesting, no one is quite sure. A little Murdoch, some cuts, some fees, but mainly the fact Jeremy Hunt was alive. Even their organising email seems quite confused:

Hi all,
1. Correction for the open organising meeting this Thursday 5pm in room 3.24 (not 1.24) old building
Hope to see lots there!
2. Tory MP Jeremy Hunt will be speaking at LSE tomorrow (Wednesday) at 6.30pm in the NAB. We will be joining students from LSE, SOAS and UCL by protesting outside the NAB from 6.15. This is the man who has said ‘poor people should have less children’, and is now responsible for pushing through benefit cuts to the most vunerable in society as the dissabilities [sic.] minister.
Bring your anti-fees banners down and lets tell him where he can stuff his cuts!

Witnesses in the room report that the whole thing was rather embarrassing for the event organisers but even more so for the protesters:

“People didn’t know what to look at first – in the end hundreds of us just waited patiently for them to leave. Snoddy was angry; an LSE alumnus who works for Polis said that when Douglas Hurd came along to the LSE 20 years ago they talked to him, they didn’t barrack him, that’s the way to do it.”

Trying to tell that to Red-Fascists is like talking to a brick wall. Hunt was quite right to tell them where to go, there was four times as many people in the room he was already engaging with before thirty overgrown, noisy, children rudely interrupted. Why didn’t they attend the event in the normal way and ask a question like anyone else? If you behave like idiots, you shouldn’t be surprised when you are treated like one.

A good day for justice it seems. Edward Woollard who was revealed as the infamous thug who threw a fire extinguisher off the roof off CCHQ, narrowly avoiding killing a copper, has been sent down for 2 years and 8 months for violent disorder. Just long enough to do an Open University course.  The judge said the heavy sentence against Wollard is warning to other protesters not to ‘cross the line’.

Today’s unsophisticated storm whipped up by the left about political rhetoric came at a rather unfortunate time for the former NUS President and Labour councillor/MP wannabe Wes Streeting. In his headline piece on the Progress website he talks about turning Labour guns on the Tories:

He better hope that no Tory politico is ever violently attacked because obviously, following their logic, the left would instantly blame him. There goes that safe seat…

This morning’s Guardian leader lambasted the violent rhetoric they claim is to blame for the tragic shootings in Tuscon. However true to form they haven’t always practiced what they preach. Take for example this picture of a hanging effigy of Nick Clegg taken outside the Guardian’s King Cross HQ. Did any Guardianista step up and slam that? No.

Nor did they have any problem with one of their own using shooting rhetoric during the election. Say Cameron had been shot or attacked, would the lefty twitterati have riled against Toynbee for suggesting the LibDems and Labour needed to “turn their guns on the real enemy”? No of course not. While having a debate about what is an acceptable way to describe your political opponents is one thing, doing so on the back of an attempt to politicise the actions of a deranged lunatic is a new low.

Co-conspirators from inside TUC HQ have been reporting back from Netroots UK. Undeniably a good turnout for the event, the subsidised £5 ticket price including lunch and booze clearly worked as an enticement.

The speeches from Sunder Katwala of the Fabians and Clifford Singer of MyDavidCameron fame where well received. Sunder cited polling evidence of the cuts losing popular support as a sign the left are winning, Clifford gave a humorous talk which went down well claiming that the Daily Mail was co-opted into spreading UK Uncut’s message by the nature of their campaign.

Nigel Stanley, Head of Campaigns at the TUC, was surprisingly candid, admitting that the “Coalition’s narratives of bloated public sector and wasteful welfare are strong” and that the “unions are seen as vested producer interests (with gold-plated pensions)” – a backhanded compliment to the success of the Taxpayers’ Alliance campaigning. Does have the strategic campaigning advantage of being true…

Polly Toynbee went down less well, Sunny Hundal in the chair allowed her to ramble on for too long and the audience – judging by the Twitter reaction – was not impressed with her acceptance of the fact of the cuts – the audience wants to fight to stop the cuts, she took comfort from the fact that they will damage the popularity of the government. A realpolitik stance that was far too defeatist for left-wingers in the audience.

Tom Watson went down badly with his “Comrades” opening line which is a bit too old school “scary” for the kids and his plea for everyone to join Labour brought the inevitable left-wing reaction from Maeve Mckeown raging against Labour over Iraq, tuition fees and the usual Blairite crimes. Lefties love ranting against Labour sell-outs…

Guido managed to get a mention from the floor – apparently this blog shaped how the election turned out – Sunder reckoned Guido was too extremist and that left-wing blogs have more “range and depth”. In other words they are more boring.

The New Statesman’s Laurie Penny summarised the morning thus:

We're listening politely whilst appointed arbiters of the centre-left mow the grassroots into a neat, acceptable bourgeois lawn #netrootsuk—
Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) January 08, 2011

In a change from talking to each other on Twitter, online-lefties are getting together this weekend to work out how they can break-out from their hitherto introverted conversation. True to their ideals Netroots will be their Central Planning Committee. With TUC money behind it the more bonkers elements of the unpopular side of the blogosphere are having a get-together to work out the best way to republish lines from Tom Watson’s attack unit and make it look like an organic, genuine grassroots operation.  It will probably turn out to be a frothing, righteous but ultimately meaningless circle-jerk.

Guido has some advice for the on-message bloggers of LabourList, Next Left, Liberal Conspiracy, Left Foot Forward, Political Scrapbook et al. Today shows just where you are going wrong. So blind are you in your partisan tribal loyalty that not a single one of you could bring yourself to report on a convicted thief because of the colour of the rosette he once wore. This head-in-the-sand mentality is why you are only preaching to the choir. The coordination which is evident in some of the simultaneous choices of subject matter is transparently obvious – it doesn’t do your readers any service to all be saying the same thing about an issue simultaneously – in fact it is a turn off for readers to see the same thing that they have read elsewhere.

ConservativeHome looks at issues of concern to Tory activists entirely differently to the panglossian way the Labour blogosphere by and large treats internal issues. Tim Montgomerie is respected by the Tory body politic because he is candid. Even forgiving its McBride-directed past, LabourList will not really be respected by the Labour Party machine so long as it reads like a fanzine. Political Scrapbook, which like Guido aims to cover politics in a more entertaining and accessible way, invariably ignores Labour bad news stories. Is that really best for their readers?

The online left are well to the left of ordinary Labour voters, in America the “nutroots” online crowd was quietly despised by the Obama campaign’s operation because they were flaky lefties. The more influence the UK nutroots crowd have on Ed Miliband the better as far as Guido is concerned, they will drag him to the left and away from the voters. The nutroots crowd’s support for the counter-productive violent student demos shows they just can’t see what a turn off lefties are to the voting public. So all power to the nutroots, may they succeed in dragging the Labour Party as far to the left as they can…

If you ever need reassuring that the green movement is populated by something other than looneyleft, you better look away now. In this morning’s Guardian George Monbiot advocates that the rich should have their homes forcibly opened up to solve housing shortages and those that refuse be punished:

“It needs to be researched, debated, fought over. It needs to turn political. I can understand why neither the government nor the opposition dares to think about it: none of the major parties wants to pick a fight with wealthy householders. So it’s up to us to give them no choice, by turning under-occupation into an issue they can’t avoid. It cannot be left to the market, as the market works for the rich.”

Guido would like to offer Monbiot’s country pile in Machynlleth, Wales to the public first. All together now… Let’s all go to Monbiot’s, let’s all go to Monbiot’s, la la la la…

UPDATE: Mark Wallace does the maths and Ed West at The Telegraph has given George two barrels – “New year, new fascist-egalitarian proposal from the Guardian”.