Doing the Pancake Walk
Health and Safety struck yesterday in St Albans:
With their frying pans primed, the teams were set to sprint to victory.
Hundreds of well-wishers lined the course expecting the usual thrills, spills and slip-ups of the annual pancake race. But the jolly mood turned sour when a new health and safety rule was announced moments before the start – no running.Spectators at the Shrove Tuesday event in St Albans, Hertfordshire, booed the city’s tourism manager Charles Baker as he explained there were fears competitors might fall over.
Mr Baker announced: ‘We have a new set of rules today due to the wet weather conditions and health and safety regulations.’
After outlining the running ban, he added: ‘It is a genuine health and safety concern. People fall over in the dry – they will certainly fall over in the wet.
The BBC and the Winter Olympics
Our wonderful BBC, looking after our money:
The BBC is under fire after sending more staff to cover the Winter Olympics than Britain has athletes who are competing.
Led by Sue Barker, Hazel Irvine and Clare Balding, the BBC has a 74-strong staff in Canada – 22 more than in the GB team.
Get Gordon! Fight Fire with Fire
Daniel Finkelstein is not too happy with the newly aggressive approach adopted by the Conservatives in their attacks on Gordon Brown:
The Tories will get burnt fighting fire with fire
To the contrary, the recent ‘Death Tax’ poster, and Cameron’s attacks on Brown, have been the most effective parts of the Conservative campaign so far. I’m sure that if they continue in this mode it will be reflected in a higher opinion poll lead. If they follow Finkelstein, and his softly-softly, ‘look-at-me-I’m-a-nice-guy’ approach, and neglect negative and aggressive campaigning, the opinion poll lead will sink towards hung parliament territory.
Come on, Cameron. Take the advice of Iain Macleod: the best time to kick a man is when he’s down.
Trouble Brewing in the Falklands
From the BBC:
Argentina has imposed new controls on shipping to the Falkland Islands in a growing oil dispute with the UK.
But we can rest easy in the knowledge that this government will do all in its power to meet any threat to British sovereignty in the Falklands. Can’t we?
Can’t we?
The Brutal and Simple Truth of War
Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review Online, on the brutal, simple and, for many, unpalatable truth of winning the war on terror:
Insurgencies, of course, are complex operations, but in general even they are not immune from eternal rules of war. Winning hearts and minds is essential; providing security for the populace is crucial; improving the economy is critical to securing the peace. But all that said, we cannot avoid the pesky truth that in war — any sort of war — killing enemy soldiers stops the violence.
The BNP and Freedom of Speech
Tim Black, at Spiked, deplores the state-enforced changes to the BNP constitution:
By threatening a political organisation with civil legal proceedings unless it changed its constitution – a constitution which reflected that group’s beliefs – the state is effectively deciding the nature of opposition in the political sphere, what views can be tolerated, and what views can’t.
That the object of state-enforced configuration is the BNP ought not to detract from what is a serious affront to democracy. Yes, the BNP holds obnoxious views, and yes, its membership and employment policy was repellent – but freedom of speech, and its accompaniment, the freedom to associate with those whom one agrees with, ought not to be negotiable. Just because in this case it’s the freedom to hold racist opinions, and to associate with those who hold similarly abhorrent views, it does not mean that fundamental democratic principles should just be abandoned.
Baroness Ashton Under Attack
Baroness Ashton, the EU’s ‘foreign affairs supremo’ is coming under attack. Of course, the criticism is being ascribed to sexism, and has absolutely nothing to do with her manifest unsuitability for the role. Even Geoff Hoon would have been better.
Keeping it in the Family
Jack Dromey, the husband of Harriet Harman, has been shortlisted for the safe (?) Labour seat of Birmingham Erdington. Labour’s National Executive Council ruled that Erdington would not have an all-women shortlist, thus allowing him to stand.
It’s good to see family values alive and well in the Labour Party.
Alistair Campbell on Gordon Brown
A helpful intervention from Alistair Campbell, as he ‘reveals’ that Gordon Brown undermined colleagues under Blair’s Premiership:
Gordon did have people around him who were briefing against colleagues all the time. I just didn’t. Politics is a team game
Of course you didn’t, Alistair.
I’ve Never Voted Tory Before….
Iain Martin interprets the latest Tory campaign as marking the development of a new version of Cameronian Conservatism:
What is happening, and what these latest ads suggest, is that Hilton and others are trying to construct a pitch for a Cameron conservatism better in tune with the uncertain aftermath of The Great Recession. In this way, in the adverts Hilton gives the father battling hard to keep his business going equal weight to the young woman from Brighton who works in a hostel.
He sees great potential in the fusing of two strands of Conservatism:
Yet fuse together the rhetoric and concerns of One Nation with economic dynamism (compassion and responsibility meet growth and efficiency) and Cameron might have something potentially very powerful and enduring.
Although he is not to impressed with the implementation:
But if that truly is what he or any of his fellow senior Conservatives are trying to do they are making quite a meal of serving it up to the watching public.
