UKIP in Crewe and Nantwich

UKIP are getting more professional and they have just launched a by-election site for Mike Nattrass MEP who is the UKIP candidate in Crewe and Nantwich. They have a battle bus too, so this should add to the fun as well as the publicity!

Only us criminals!

In order for me to be a Junior Church helper, I've had to undergo the "robust" checking of the Criminal Records Bureau. Thankfully they did not get me mixed up with somebody else with a similar name who has a string of convictions. On BBC's Watchdog there were a number of people that were not so lucky.

I am now the proud owner of an Enhanced Criminal Record Certificate. It all sounds so Orwellian, but then that's par for the course in New Labour Britain. Anybody coming into the country for the first time and being shown such a document would think that we are all potential crooks and miscreants. I've passed OK on all five categories. The first category is the "Police Records of Convictions, Cautions, Reprimands and Final Warnings". It is all a bit reminiscent of school. "This is your final warning, I won't tell you again!".

Doesn't it all some up the sorry pass we've come to. The assumption is that we have to prove we are innocent of a crime, and then get a certificate that makes us feel as if we actually were a wrongdoer and we begin to doubt are own being. It does seem to me all a bit cart-before-the-horse but I readily appreciate the need for caution and care in matters regarding children and vulnerable people.

I just think they could call the certificate something else!

Republican Race goes round in circles

According to the Daily Telegraph, the Republican race is really over. Click on to their "Republican Nomination Race" link and you go straight to the Democratic one. Ron Paul is still in with the desire to get as many delegates as possible, but there is no desire to show it from the Telegraph's point of view. Ron Paul got 8% in North Carolina, and Mike Huckabee did even better on 12%! In Indiana, Mitt Romney was on the ticket as well and managed 5%. These guys are out of the race apparently, but that doesn't stop some people wanting to vote for them!

The press is very "sided", so the maxim "don't always believe what you read in the papers" is very true.

It's all over for Hillary

I felt that Barack Obama had the Democratic nomination in his grasp weeks ago. I still think he will be the nominee and that Hillary Clinton has missed the boat this time. She needs to decide whether she folds her tent now, at the end of the month or in June. Fold it she will have to.

This particular race is not about her being a woman and him being from an ethnic minority background. This is all about change. Obama has sensed that, as did Ron Paul for the Republicans. Americans are fed up with having to do two or three jobs to make ends meet. They are at the end of their tethers over fickle financiers and corrupt corporations. The war in Iraq has stretched their patriotic hearts to bleeding point and they see their jobs exported in return for cheap Chinese merchandise.

Is it any wonder that they want change? It wouldn't matter what colour Barack Obama was, he'd still come through. It is his message that resonates not his skin tones. He will be in the White House not for who he is but for what he has promised to do. Make lasting change happen!

New Labour Joke of the Week!

"Labour sources in Crewe last night claimed voters were not raising the 10p issue with them."

From the Daily Mail.

John Edwards - damned if he does, damned if he doesn't!

Senator John Edwards isn't exactly sitting on the fence. That would put him slightly above the fray. No, I put him in the corner of the stockade with a fiesty filly on one side and a charasmatic steer on the other. Whichever way Edwards goes, he's bound to get kicked!

In a People Magazine exclusive (as they say!) John and Elizabeth Edwards have been waxing in a fairly lyrical way about what they like (and dislike) about Clinton and Obama. All very good, but it's more that just curate's egg philosophy. It's really just saying they aren't telling us who they support. At least Jimmy Carter said everyone in his family was backing Obama, but he couldn't go that far (nudge, nudge; wink, wink) as he was a Super Delegate.

So what is the bottom line? They can't say. After all North Carolina is John Edwards territory and it may be the spark that sets off a second revolution, so he's staying mute. The couple said they will not endorse either remaining candidate, saving their political capital for their own causes – his, fighting poverty; hers, fighting for universal health care.

I have a hunch Elizabeth Edwards is more astute politically than her husband. Achieving the goal of universal health care will help alleviate poverty but fighting poverty, although laudable, is fairly nebulous and does not guarantee a more healthy population. My guess is that the pair of them will need to find a compromise over the symbolism of electing the first woman as president or the first first-generation African-(Kenyan)-American as president.

It really is make-your-mind-up time in the Edwards' kitchen. Anymore dithering and it will be a touch of the Harry Trumans. Heat of the kitchen, and all that!

All change at Crewe - Oh, and Nantwich too!

The Crewe and Nantwich By-election will be upon us very soon. An unseemly rush to hold the election, an unseemly scramble for candidates to be nominated. All very unseemly in the unseemly world of New Labour.

The election will be on the 22nd May and Labour have announced that Gwyneth Dunwoody's daughter Tamsin will fight the seat. There has been a long tradition in British politics for spouses or other relatives to take over the party cause in by-elections. Some would say this is a way to keep the electorate on side with a sympathy vote, others think it gives a natural feeling of dynastic continuity. After all, an MP in the Westminster model of democracy is very much wedded to a constituency. In fact, constituents are known to get the hump on occasions as with Mark Woodnutt in the Isle of Wight or the Leyton by-election of 1965 when Harold Wilson thought it a good idea to drop Patrick Gordon Walker onto the constituency. Leyton voters thought otherwise, and gave him a big raspberry at the ballot box.

On the matter of raspberries, Gordon Brown's been getting the pick of the crop recently. However, he will be looking to the voters in Crewe and Nantwich to give him a juicy plum instead. The Conservatives will be wanting to stem a particular tide of historical political by-election fact. The fact that the last Conservative by-election gain from Labour was Mitcham & Morden, in June 1982. And that was only because the sitting MP decided to test the electorate after defecting to the SDP. He was advised not to do it, but did it anyway. So it is little wonder that no defector has done it since, the last being Bob Spink to UKIP.

All eyes will be on the Conservatives here. Can they beat a 26-year gap in by-election success? David Cameron should say loud and clear what the Tories will do on taxation, helping the poor, about local democracy, cleaning up Westminster politics, and tackling abuses in immigration and employment. He should lay out a proper set of policies on penal reform (not just building more prisons) and he should tackle the abuses that the minority of businesses use in helping create a perception of rip-off Britain. We've seen the corporate cowboys telling us that they have "robust business models" in place, when they have nothing of the kind. Firmer regulation not more regulation, that should be the way forward.

A Conservative Party that has policies that are properly understood and agreed with by the electorate will be a winner. Ones that give the impression of spin and deception won't.