Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Levy arrested again

Tony Blair’s chief fundraiser, Lord Levy, has been arrested by police for a second time. This follows last week’s high profile arrests of Ruth Turner and John McTernan, Blair’s Director of Government Relations and Director of Political Operations respectively.

The whiff of top-level corruption reeks stronger by the day. Could this be why there are rumours that Blair is preparing a speedy departure…?

All political careers end in failure. Blair’s legacy shopping has seemed somewhat frantic latterly – like the workaholic husband who’s realised that it’s 22:00 on February 13 and breakfast in bed and flowers to her office won’t cut it for the fifth year in a row.

18:45 Update:
Lord Levy has been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The “conspiracy” caveat in this instance is interesting – who was he conspiring with, and will he protect them? Will they protect him?

Prime Minister’s Questions will be interesting tomorrow. That is unless something really bad happens and Blair plays the ‘tragic magic’ card to get off the hook. Is that too cynical? Tanks at Heathrow?

Guido has campaigned long and hard on the Loans for Lordships issue. The power of political bloggers is becoming more evident.

image hat-tip Theo Spark
(site NSFW)

Posted by Ben at 6:21 pm | | Comments (4)

Friday, January 26, 2007

Blair urged to push through gay adoption laws


At some point this year, homosexuals (pictured) will be able to adopt. This has caused outrage from the Catholic Church, and Christianity as a whole. It's probably caused outrage from Islam and Judaism too, but as the media (or the media I read at least) is generally pro-gay-rights and pro-hating-America, the Muslim angle has almost certainly been overlooked as it would portray. I'm not sure why Judaism hasn't come into it.

Oh, I just checked and both of these religion are right behind the Catholics and the Protestants - they think that people's religious beliefs are much more important than equality for people who choose to have sex in a different way.

I hope that one day governments begin to recognise that race, disability, gender and age are not choices, and so we shouldn't discriminate against people based on these things. Sexuality of any kind is about what you do and not what you feel, so it is largely a choice - but heterosexual and homosexual feelings are arguably not a choice, so we shouldn't discriminate against people based on who they are attracted to (with some notable exceptions I won't go into). Religious beliefs are a choice, though they're one that many people take so seriously they're prepared to kill and die to prove they made the right one. (I'm trying to spark a debate here, so please do argue with me). Where religion goes against any of the above, it should always take second place.

This site says the Bible doesn't say anything bad about homosexuality anyway. Perhaps it just creeps out the Pope?

Posted by Matt at 10:56 am | | Comments (15)

Thursday, January 25, 2007

New Broadsheet Format

The Policy Blender is proud to be published in our new ‘broadsheet’ format. Research has shown that, although our tabloid format was useful for commuters and more accessible in style, the pages were quite small. Our research also showed that not many people enjoy our quality output on the train anyway.

We would like to take this opportunity to assure our readers that, although we are no longer a ‘tabloid’ format, we will strive to maintain the historically low standards of which we are proud.

The same weak quality of satire, politically incorrect jokes and poor taste will be upheld, with every effort made to desecrate not only the English language but our cultural and historical values too.

Posted by Ben at 9:47 pm | | Comments (0)

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Breaking News: Castro not dead yet

Ailing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is tonight still alive (as at 17:34 GMT).

Hundreds of thousands of half-arsed student-rebel types around the world are yet again denied their chance to grieve by the Leftist idol’s impressive staying power.


Fidel, shown on the left of international T-Shirt entrepreneur Che Guevara, underwent intestinal surgery for Diverticulitis on July 31 and has been treated for resulting complications since.


What’s the betting that when he finally shuffles the mortal coil the BBC’s obituary is slightly more positive than that for Pinochet? Despite the Callous Cuban’s much more extensive political execution record (3:1 – making Augusto look very ordinary).

Posted by Ben at 5:34 pm | | Comments (0)

Brits salvage Chinese debris

Police have condemned a group of scavengers who have claimed salvage rights on a load of Chinese debris that was scattered over the South Coast this weekend.

The debris, which was confirmed by the Chinese Government to be the result of an anti-satellite missile test, contains material that might be valuable to the British military.

One scavenger, a Mr Des Browne from Scotland, said “look, we’ve got the lowest level of funding in our armed forces since 1932. It’s only right and proper that we get ourselves down to the beach to grab as much metal and electrical stuff as possible so that we can patch up the only working tank we have left and point it at some other country in the Middle East,” before adding: “probably Iran”.

Posted by Ben at 11:06 am | | Comments (3)

Monday, January 22, 2007

Google newscheck

Top stories today:
Iranian missile tests - 826 articles
Oil spill off Devon - 461 articles
Labour may split Home Office in two -216 articles
Serbian election - 450 articles
Jade Goody racist/not-racist/stupid/not-stupid-cause-she's-rich/suicidal(yay!)/not-suicidal(boo!) - 1,282 articles.

They say nothing succeeds like success, I think, though I never figured out why they say it. I would say, nothing succeeds like being a fuckwit publicly.

For anyone reading this overseas, who may have heard the news about Jade and her coven being racists: The British are not any more given to racism than any other nation. They're also not given to stupidity any more than any other nation. The difference is that we seem to like putting our morons on TV. It makes us laugh to watch them trying to form opinions, relationships and sentences. The problem then arises when people assume that, because these are the ones we're proud to broadcast, these must be either the elite, or the people who are, well, most typical. We're not all Jade Goody. A disturbing number of us are, (and no one seems to have worked out that this is not something to be proud of,) but not all of us. And on behalf of those of us who are not Jade Goody, I'm deeply, deeply sorry.

Posted by Matt at 10:14 am | | Comments (0)