In 1996 the whole of luvviedom embraced Tony Blair, 1997 saw the whole Cool Britainnia thing sweep up celebrities into the embrace of New Labour. So it is interesting to see that Stephen Fry, the luvvie’s luvvie, is giving Tory house journal The Spectator’s Annual Lecture. “So what?” you might say, he has after all a book to promote, except that is not all to suggest a blue slip is showing.

Yesterday Fry, who is a tech-blogging, Twittering über-geek with a huge 82,115 following his prognostications on life and technology, gave his considered support to the Tory policy announced by George Osborne yesterday to adopt a more effective open IT procurement process and shifting towards open source solutions.

Fry said yesterday

“Lo, our sheep that was lost is now found’. This is good news. Aside from anything else the money that could be saved in government: schools, hospitals, civil service, defence, by choosing open source and free operating systems and software. It’s wave that’s rolling over Europe and America and it’s only right that we in Britain should ride that wave too. I think politicians from all sides should endorse the aim for public systems to be run on free open source software.”

Daniel Kawczynski, has replied (with a little poking) to Guido’s question; Would you be willing to hand over another constituent’s letter in similar circumstances?

In future I will refuse to hand over any document to Police until they have showed me a Court Order from a Magistrate instructing me to do so.

Daniel Kawczynski MP

As they say in New Labour circles, “lessons have been learned”…

Lord Mandelson’s new found willingness to support the “British” car manufacturers is touching. When he tried to get an £80,000 Italian Maserati mid-life-crisis car as his official car out of the EU budget he was less supportive. He was in fact angry that penny-pinching bureaucrats blocked his turbo-tax-powered transport.

It would be a little more credible if the Labour Party last year had listened to the industry when they, in the name of Green taxes, whacked hundreds of pounds extra in tax on all those models that have stayed in the showrooms since. Forgetting that jobs depended on those cars being bought. It is an entirely foreseeable consequence of jacking up taxes that demand has been suppressed over and above the credit crunch problems…

First he plundered your pension then Crash Gordon worked his magic on the stock market. To mis-quote Neil Kinnock, “I warn you: don’t get old, don’t invest your pension in the stock market”. One long Tory boom, two Labour “boom to busts”…

UPATE : Some half-educated types are claiming in the comments that the above should be done using a logarithmic Y-axis. Not sure why beyond that it would flatter the latter era of the chart. If we are going to be picky than perhaps it should be inflation adjusted or using constant value time-fixed pounds, or maybe done in net present value terms. The graph would look even worse…

Over on Dale’s blog, Daniel Kawczynski, the Tory MP who handed over a constituent’s letter to the police without a warrant, has written a lengthy self-justification blaming the Speaker and the police for his own stupidity (as well as using his staffers as human shields).

He emailed a very similar lengthy missive last week after Guido suggested he was an idiot. Having taken the time to read his squirming explanation Guido replied