The Prime Minister’s Behaviour
With apologies to Tennessee Ernie Ford, let’s have another little song thanks to Dungeekin
New Labour’s legacy is money and blood,
Under them this country has been dragged through the mud,
The damage began with Grinning Tone,
Now the PM’s weak and it’s all gone wrong,
Gordon Brown and Alternative Voting
Downing Street has admitted “time is tight” to get laws for a referendum on scrapping Britain’s first past the post voting system through Parliament. Gordon Brown wants to replace it with “alternative vote,” where candidates are ranked in order of preference. The Prime Minister says this is a better way of choosing MPs but the Conservatives say the existing method is fair and “keeps extremists out”.
To continue Boris’s theme of voting methods here is a latest offering from Dungeekin who thinks we should have a little song in honour of the debate:
Billy Bragg to withhold taxes in bank bonus row
Singer-songwriter and political activist says he is ‘no longer prepared to fund the excessive bonuses of RBS investment bankers’. Read the story here.
Boris quote on the tax on bank bonuses: “The Government is doing nothing more than fast-tracking the departure of this talent pool out of Britain”.
Here, with a satirical twist, is Dungeekin with his take on the situation – check him out @dungeekin
Merry Christmas 09
Guido is like Santa Claus, or so he claims. See his very funny video with top ten political moments here
And further satire from our resident friend Dungeekin here
Inspired by Dungeekin is a brilliant ’cheery Christmas Song’ by Man Widdicombe here or with the lyrics here
The Challenge of Housing and Homelessness
Guest Blog by raincoaster - presenting a challenge
“The view is more beautiful now that it is mine.” Ran
Hendrik Gets His Chair by AHA Media
I can be challenging. Boris knows it, Melissa knows it, the nation of Albania knows it, I know it, you know it (well you know now, don’t you?). So I’d like to put this inherent challengenosity (a raincoasterism) of mine to good use and dare your city to match or beat my city in something that really matters. Read on, if you think your humble burb has what it takes:
We all know this blog belongs to the Mayor of London (although detached it is still his in spirit), and before that was based out of the cosmopolitan megalopolis of Henley, but for a moment I’d like to divert your attention to my own town, indeed my own neighborhood. I’d like to introduce you to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. (More photos of Hendrik on his revolving chair here)
Queen of Hastings Street
With an average life expectancy in the mid-forties (thanks to disease, addiction, and the interlocking social and physical problems arising from substandard- or no housing), the DTES (Downtown Eastside) has been an archetypal skid row since the days in the last century when lumber was, in fact, skidded in the mud down the street on its way to the sawmill because wagons were for the rich folk.
Now, after more than a century of struggling with the issue, I’m proud to say that Vancouver has eliminated homelessness.
Image by Peter Davies, From the Hope in Shadows collection, COPYRIGHT: Pivot Legal Society, 2009
Yes, Homelessness is Over! Watch this amazing news story
Jo Johnson is the Candidate for Orpington
Boris’s brother has just won the selection to stand in the safe Conservative seat of Orpington where the current MP, John Horam, is standing down.
Stanley, his father, recently described him as “taller and blonder than Boris” and he is the Financial Times’ South Asia bureau chief. Based in New Delhi since January 2005, he leads the team of FT journalists that covers India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives. In addition to his coverage for the print edition, he writes a regular online column, Engaging India.
A graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, from which he received a first class degree in Modern History, he has worked for the FT since 1997. His first job on the newspaper was on the Lex Column, which he joined after a a stint as a corporate financier in the investment banking division of Deutsche Bank.
He completed an MBA at INSEAD in 2000 and served as an FT Paris correspondent from 2001-2004. He is co-author, with Martine Orange, of The Man who Tried to Buy the World: Jean-Marie Messier and the Rise and Fall of Vivendi Universal (Penguin, 2003).
Many congratulations Jo and we look forward to hearing more about you in the coming months ahead.
