So, anyone found any YouTubes of Boris respectfully attacking Gordon Brown the other day? I could use a chuckle lately.

Sledger, am I right in thinking you are an embittered northerner who got a place at Oxford, couldn’t hack it, and are now playing out your grudge at every opportunity by posting under a series of different names?

I have some questions about your role here on the website (Sledger)
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Fire away, old son.

What on earth are you on about StevenL???? – it’s too abstract for me…..

Sledger and his aliases may have to be cleared off soon so all will be roses again

Just for a laugh. To show that this explosion in a shredded wheat factory is not to blame personally. After all, David Cameron made him do it.

http://www.blink.org.uk/pdescription.asp?key=15274&grp=82&cat=414

Daily Mail
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Boris Johnson has soared ahead of Ken Livingstone in the race to be Mayor, a poll reveals today.
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The most detailed survey yet puts the Tory candidate 12 points ahead, suggesting many Londoners feel it is time for change.
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The YouGov poll has Mr Johnson on 49 per cent, the Mayor on 37 per cent and Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick on 12.

PaulD, after all we’ve meant to one another! That’s it, I’m only talking to Steven and idlex now. Oh, wait: I’m not supposed to be talking to Steven either.

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All you right-wingers are prejudiced and prone to making overgeneralizations!

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idlex, great post. I agree with virtually everything you said there (I hedge my bets because I can’t see anything I disagree with at the moment but have a lawyerly evasiveness about me at all times, like an invisibility cloak). You’re right about your prediction in particular. If Boris wins, he will be both Cameron’s greatest flagbearer (yeah, for like six weeks, and then POOF!) and greatest rival. But why do you assume that Boris would not be able to change Toryism? It’s proven itself quite a lot more mutable than anyone would have given it credit for thirty years ago.

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It must be said that Boris’ chances in his next election are quite a lot better than Cameron’s in his. Cameron’s best hope is that Boris doesn’t screw up but also doesn’t demonstrate real leadership, otherwise a change of jockeys might be in order.

PaulD, after all we’ve meant to one another!
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Oh dearest Raincoaster! Wasn’t it you who said the distinction between Left and Right is becoming ever more blurred? Even if it wasn’t you, it is true. You must have realised by now that some of my views are so far to the left they’re out in the Bristol Channel. Others are half way across the North Sea.
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When I said the Left are detached from reality, I meant they seem quite unable to understand human nature beyond their own little textbook version of how the world ought to function. It would be nice to say that New Labour are merely incapable of predicting the consequences of their principles, except they have no principles beyond a manic desire to stay in power.
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And that’s why I will stick with Boris. He understands human nature.
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Don’t worry my sweet, it wasn’t aimed at you.

idlex, I disapprove of smoking altogether, but I am comforted by the fact that when you all die, we get your stuff. See, I knew I hedged that statement for a reason: I oppose smoking in public, and it’s quite Victorian of me I must admit, but there you have it. Universal smoking was an aberration of the 20th Century and as such should be buried with Eighties hair and winkle-pickers.

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You say that Boris is too intellectual for the Tory party, something with which I agree, but that could change if he changes the party itself. Tell me, does he have enough support WITHIN the party (and I am speaking of the MPs and so on, not the voters) to do that? I believe he does have the public support and if he were running in the US or Canada he’d probably do very well as an independent. The key to whether or not he can change the party is in the extent of his influence with its members. I’d say apparatchiks, but I can’t spell it. I’m a bad lefty.

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And yes, PaulD, that was me who said Left and Right were becoming pointless distinctions and refer not to existing movements but to relics of the past. But if we ARE to keep it real, yo, we must admit you meant somebody and surely a person who believes that all property should be publicly held is a member of what you referred to as the Left. That would be me. I even have some really nice stuff, too!

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Steven, I can’t remember why I’m not supposed to be speaking to you, but I think it was one of your “Lefties are all crooks who want to stop me from making a living and picking up chicks and I never want to deal with them again as long as I live” rants. You’re supposed to keep track of these things!

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As for your observation about Boris and DaveC, well, all I can say is you and I went to very, VERY different schools. And Boris, of course, went to Eton and we all know how THEY turn out.

Universal smoking was an aberration of the 20th Century – raincoaster
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That’s not true. Tobacco has been smoked in various ways for over four centuries in the western world. Mostly in pipes. But also cigars. Cigarettes were a late 19th century innovation. It’s also been chewed and snorted. It has attracted disapproval for about as long, and has frequently been banned.
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And why ‘aberration’? Tobacco relieves stress and aids concentration. Along with alcohol, its use is one of the principal ways that westerners relax and have a good time. And since the UK smoking ban came into force, I haven’t been able to relax and have a good time. The ban has pretty much destroyed my social life. And that of many other people. That’s the real aberration.
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You say that Boris is too intellectual for the Tory party, something with which I agree, but that could change if he changes the party itself. Tell me, does he have enough support WITHIN the party (and I am speaking of the MPs and so on, not the voters) to do that?

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I’m not a member of the Conservative party, or even a Conservative, so I don’t know how Boris plays inside the Conservative party. Michael Portillo isn’t the only Tory who has said that he doesn’t regard Boris to be a serious politician: David Cameron said the same not long ago. Or said that there was inside Boris a serious politician trying to get out. But Michael Portillo is a failed politician. And David Cameron may be a flash in the pan. He’s modeled himself on Tony Blair, and Tony Blair is now another failed politician.
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I don’t know what sort of change you want to see in the Tory party. Or what sort of change Boris might want. And I don’t think it really matters much. Boris looks set to get in on a tide of anti-Labour sentiment. Rather a lot of people have come to really hate Labour, for reasons which have everything to do with petty, arrogant, interfering rules and regulations like the smoking ban. I now hate them more than I hated Thatcher 20 years ago. It’s become that visceral. And Ken Livingstone, even if he’s a semi-detached member of the Labour party, is the perfect embodiment of mean-spirited, arrogant, and dictatorial New Labour’s bully state. All Boris – and the Tory party – needs to offer is Something Different. For 20 years Labour have lived off the country’s detestation of Thatcher (who was in many ways as mean-spirited and arrogant and dictatorial as New Labour is now). But those days are over. She’s history now.

I look at Cameron and I see a very scared milquetoast. (Raincoaster)
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Well you learn something every day. Milquetoast: a very timid, unassertive, spineless person, esp. one who is easily dominated or intimidated. Origin: 1935–40, Americanism; after Caspar Milquetoast, a character in The Timid Soul, comic strip by H. T. Webster (1885–1952), American cartoonist.
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Idlex can deal with the second half.

Prior to that time it was confined to private property or on limited ceremonial occasions – raincoaster
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I don’t think that’s true either. Smoking, very often using clay pipes, was universal at every level of society, even if disapproved of by puritans, then as now. People smoked in pubs, and at work, and in the street. One can find pictures depicting the scenes. There’s a particularly fine engraving at a pub not far from where I live, depicting 18th century pub-goers sat round a table smoking long, rather elegant clay pipes. Archaeological digs come up with hundreds of such pipes. In America, the skeletons of the early settlers are sometimes found with a notch in their teeth, the result of a lifetime with a pipe clamped between their teeth. I smoked a clay pipe for a while, and I could immediately understand the utility of that notch.
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do you think DaveC said that to put Boris in his place? I look at Cameron and I see a very scared milquetoast.

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I certainly read it that way. The two may well be good friends, but they are also rivals. And I don’t see Cameron as a milquetoast (milktoast – wet, soppy creature). He’s far too cruel to Gordon at PM question time to be that. I see him as calculating and devious. I think he’s adopted global warming, and given up smoking, because he feels he must be seen to pay lip service to these modern fads. Like Boris, he rides around on a bicycle. But, apparently unlike Boris, he ignores the rules of the road while doing so, riding the wrong way up one-way streets, going through red lights. Some newspaper caught him in a sting operation a couple of weeks back. Boris was asked about it, and he unreservedly condemned cyclists who broke the law, but refused to be drawn on Cameron’s misdeeds. “Show me the proof!” he cried, loyally.
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As I have said before, if you only socialize with addicts, and can only socialize under the influence, you’ve got an issue you should work on. You cannot socialize normally, nor with the normal.

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Is this addressed to me? Is it about me no longer going to pubs, because I can no longer smoke there? If it is, I’m sorry, but I don’t see smokers as ‘addicts’, any more than I see drinkers in pubs as ‘alcoholics’. They are normal people. And if it’s an “issue” that I should “work on”, then it’s also an issue that millions of other smokers who have deserted their pubs must presumably also “work on”. I suppose that if alcohol were banned in pubs, for all the usual fraudulent public health reasons, and drinkers deserted them just like smokers have done, they would in their turn be said to have “issues” to “work on”.
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But I don’t think there is any issue to work on. I simply don’t enjoy being in pubs any more. So why should I go? If my favourite restaurant turned vegetarian, should I still go there all the same? No. It’s not my problem. It’s theirs. If people are not prepared to meet me as I am, an eater of meat, a drinker of alcohol, and a smoker of tobacco (and occasionally of grass), then they don’t really want to know me. And I in turn don’t want to know them. Such manipulative, controlling people would next be wanting my opinions to conform to theirs, in every detail, on every matter, else take offence at that too. Be off with them!

If my favourite restaurant turned vegetarian, should I still go there all the same? No. It’s not my problem. It’s theirs. – Idlex
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A nice analogy that sums up the insanity of the smoking ban. If a vegetarian was so disgusted by meat that he couldn’t enter a restaurant that served it, he could always go to a place that didn’t have meat on the menu. A free market ensures that all tastes are catered for. Equally, if there were enough people who detested cigarette smoke, then places would exist to meet that demand. But the government has circumvented this system, which would allow people to make their own accommodations. Forget the helpless bar worker argument (this person doesn’t exist and if they do, their welfare shouldn’t form the basis of the law); the government just wants a world in which smoking does not exist and are doing their best to create it.
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Clearly New Labour have a kind of monomania when it comes to smoking. They have decided it is such a sinfully awful activity that there can be no talk of a free market or compromise. To them, this is as unthinkable as taking a softer approach to rape or murder. They make no philosophical distinction between stopping people smoking and saving them from being attacked in the street. It’s all a question of removing risk. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, when a government has no vision for the future, it’s only purpose is to preserve the present by removing any risk from our lives.

Oh dear indeed. And they all seemed quite reasonable 4 or 5 years ago. No talk of majick or wars over canned food. back then. (How does one have wars over canned food?) Perhaps it’s just me who has changed. I’ve even developed a slight soft spot for George W: at least he didn’t buy into Kyoto and global warming.
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It definitely must be me. I dread the idea of Hillary Clinton becoming the next US president, although it seems unlikely that she’ll get the nomination. Why did Boris more or less endorse her a few months back? The rather more charismatic Obama is just as worrying in many ways: I’ve no idea what he stands for except “Change”. But then McCain talks of the war in Iraq lasting “100 years”. My preference was (still is) Ron Paul. I doubt if that would go down very well on Kos. But in a world gone mad, Ron Paul seemed to be saying some plain and sensible things.

Grim reading in Taking Liberties
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David Cameron, the Conservative leader, gave a cautious welcome to proposals for a further crackdown on smoking which would ban shopkeepers from displaying cigarettes and pubs from having tobacco vending machines. “I think this is worth looking at. As someone who struggled with giving up smoking, it helps if you take away some of the temptation,” he told the BBC.

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And comment beneath by Dave Atherton:

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The conversation got round to the smoking ban, she was a smoker too. She further mentioned she worked for the Conservative Party, the office is just around the corner. I immediately asked her who was the spin doctor who advised the Shadow Health Secretary on the smoking ban. Her reply was “me actually”. So I asked her about the Tories plans for repealing or amending the smoking ban, her reply none. But..but..but, no matter what way I tried she said there was no way the smoking ban would ever be repealed.

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It seems that along with this vile law there comes the dull and certain conviction that it will never be repealed. Is there any other law about which the same could be said? Laws are made, amended, and repealed. What is it about this law that carries with it the gloomy certainty that it will never – nay, can never – be repealed.
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Despair, I think. That same despair in which love affairs end, and the ex-lover knows with utter certainty that he will Never Fall In Love Again, and that his One True Love is Lost and Gone Forever, and that the rest of his life will be spent in unremitting loneliness weeping over a few love letters and postcards of a sunnier time long ago. But then, a few months later, he catches sight of a smile across a room. And gloom and despair evaporates overnight. Or if it doesn’t, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Politics is the art of the possible. That Tory spin doctor is a gloomy smoker, for whom politics has clearly become the rote contemplation of the impossible. To advisors like that, everything must seem impossible.

Boris’s environmental policy for London has just landed. A good effort, refreshingly free from bans and regulations as it concentrates on improving what’s already there.
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He is into planting a large numbers of trees, clearing rubbish, encouraging cycling and getting the traffic moving to reduce congestion and particulates.
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Unfortunately he can’t resist “Climate change is one of the biggest threats we face, and we must all do that we
can to tackle it”. But I guess we’ve reached a point where you have to say it to get elected; at least the carbon crap is left to the end.
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This is the stuff I like – freeing and enabling instead of stamping out. Predictably his plan to reduce jams by re-phasing traffic lights – allowing engines to run more efficiently too – has already been condemned by the Left as “wanting to kill children and old people who are trying to cross the road”.

“Climate change is one of the biggest threats we face, and we must all do that we can to tackle it”.

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It’s a token gesture. All it needs to secure my full agreement is a slight adjustment:
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“Climate change alarmism is one of the biggest threats we face, and we must all do that we can to tackle it”.

When Iraq was invaded, many people subscribed to the theory that it was ‘all about oil’, because if that was true it meant that Bush was the greedy stooge of corporate America they liked to imagine he was.

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I think it was the respected outgoing US Fed chairman Alan Greenspan who wrote late last year that it was about oil. I’m not going to disagree with him. Here:
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in his book, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” published last September, he inserted one sentence that was meant to bring about a major tempest, this time in the political arena. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” Greenspan wrote

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When Tony Blair wept at the funeral of Princess Di
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Did he? I don’t remember that. I can remember him the day after she died speaking of “the Queen of Hearts”. Don’t remember him blubbing at the funeral. I did. End of fairy tale, etc. Won’t happen again.