Thersites Writes

Michael Howard was probably right to dump Howard Flight after the fool was recorded saying something that played straight into Labour's grubby little paws. Whether his swift action will undo some of the damage is anyone's guess, but it may make the situation much less apocalyptic than the BBC or Guardian claims.

But isn't it 'convenient' that this news story comes to light now, just when Tony Blair is coming under pressure to release the legal advice regarding the Second Gulf War? Whether the Tories would really be silly enough to slash Public Services, and so piss off the Serviced Public, is open to debate. But isn't it much more serious that the Government may have lead us to war on wilful misinformation? I can't stand the Tories, but I hate Prime Ministers who lie too.

But as said, isn't it all so convenient? A really paranoid blogger might think that this story was fed to the press by the No.10 Press Office - and was swallowed hook, line and sinker by a big chunk of it. How depressing.

While on the one hand, China could be a force for good, on the other it could be the world's bane. Perhaps it will be both. History will decide, and we get to watch as it happens. How DO you housetrain a Dragon?

As any fule kno, the General Election has pretty much kicked off with a vengeance. All Blair need do is officially declare that the big day will be on the 4th or the 5th of May and we'll all be put out of our misery.

This time though it could be really exiting. Never mind the too-good-to-be-true Guardian/ICM poll that says Labour is still 8 points ahead. There's too much bad blood now (poor delivery and the Iraq war) and a lot of people want to give New Labour a good bashing. Plus the Tories have, so far, managed to milk single issues, like Asylum and NHS waiting lists to their advantage.

No, this poll, which puts Labour and the Tories neck and neck is much more convincing. That's due to how things are right now - we don't all despise the Tories as much as we used to, and we're now no longer stupid enough to give Blair the benefit of the doubt any more. Brown's budget may have boosted Labour's ratings a bit, but six weeks is a long time - enough for voters to forget compelling spin - and the party may have thrown its best punch too soon.

If the election were to happen now, I'd say that the result would either be a hung Parliament or a seriously slashed Labour majority. The Tories are gaining pace, but they're not strong enough yet to completely rout Labour. The next six weeks will decide how it all goes.

So, Chancellor Gordon Brown has just delivered the budget that will supposedly win the Labour party this year's General Election. Of course he went through the same old shibboleths - living conditions up, pensioners in less poverty, longest period of growth since records began and so on. But the punter on the street can't see that. He still sees shabby public services and poor value for money from Central and Local Goverment as they waste money on yet more pointless NHS managers or PFI projects. It's no point making grand claims if the public can't see it with its own eyes. The Tories have gone for single issues rather than the Brownite grand sweep - and the voters have begun to be won over. We might not be America yet, (alas, says the Cardinal) but voters do tend to have one-track-minds.

This budget won't therefore win it. It will be how the damn thing is spun. Here Gordon might do well - it's rumoured he may now be in charge of the Labour Party's election campaign, where he has an equally impressive track record. If so, he's bound to clash with 'election supremo', Alan "I Can't Run Campaigns" Milburn. And we all know who Tony prefers as a successor. It may well be this infighting that costs Labour many of its seats or even power. I prefer the former rather than the latter - there's still a few good politicos in Labour, and the rest are in sore need of a lesson in manners.

Oh yeah, and the bastard put 1p on beer...

Some people will do anything for power. Never trust anyone who would. They can be both for and against something, but in truth only be for themselves.

Still think Hillary's the would-be saviour of the free world? She claims to be a churchgoer, but I think she hasn't read at least one passage in the Bible for a while... caveat emptor.

Would you believe it? This article says someone in Slough has had a good idea! For it claims that one teacher at Slough Grammar thinks we should not teach children French, but something useful like Mandarin.

I have to agree. French might be of use if you have a holiday home near La Rochelle. But for the most part it's not that useful. It’s spoken less and less in France's old colonies (they prefer English) and, as the article says, more people speak English anyway. French is becoming less important, partly because it is so rigid. A language with a Ministry to enforce 'proper' use of the language is hardly a healthy and dynamic one.

I can recall French lessons at school. They bored the shit out of me. It's a too-baroque and formal language. Nor did I see why it would be useful. After all, only 71 million people speak French as their mother tongue. Only 53 million speak it as a second language. Yet since teachers only knew French ('cos that was what they were taught), so we had to learn it in turn and be bored silly by a language that seemed dull and had no bearing on our lives.

More people speak Japanese then French. (And Japan is still the second biggest economy in the world.) Why can’t children learn that? If you Europhiles are desperate to get your kiddies speaking a Euro language, why not go for a really important language. How about Portuguese (178 million), as spoken in Brazil - a potential super power? Or Russian (290 million)? Or, most obvious of all, Spanish? 370 million people speak that language, such as almost all of South America. And by the end of this century, the United States will be as Hispanic as it is WASP. Children need to feel that they are getting something out of it. And learning should be fun too. There's plenty of room for heresy in the classroom.

And would it not be nice to teach languages that kids would get excited about? I would have liked the choice of learning Hindi or Arabic (both useful these days). I even enjoy the Latin classes I'm doing right now. The subject is fun to learn and it also teaches me not just history but how language works. (As does Greek. Hebrew’s good too, if you want to show off.) French just doesn't seem as exiting. (It also sounds like Latin as spoken by alcoholic tramps.) Unless, that is, you like watching three hour long navel gazing epics and buying cheap booze in Calais. Or we could learn Mandarin... Now that would be useful!

I have finally got Firefox working now. Behold! Inbuilt RSS feeds and tabbed browsing! Time to feel dreadfully smug...

Some news regarding this blog. First, since I'm doing a PhD on the subject, I'll try to have more posts that link to news stories about Online Journalism. It is a growth area of much importance - a million people use the New York Times site every day, for example. How’s that for influence? And it's at a time too when the very notion of what a journalist is has come up for debate.

I was also inspired quite a bit on Monday. I went to a seminar at the LSE about the present state of journalism. Needless to say, the woes of print media and blogs figured high - a bit too much, I felt. But it did reflect, I suppose, the spirit of the times. Everyone is blog-and-falling-circulation mad right now.

Anyway, many thanks to all the people who spoke to me at the seminar. It was interesting and I hope I made some good contacts there.

And now, the main announcement - since tout le monde* has leapt on the journo-blog bandwagon, I may as well too. I will use this blog to cover the Winchester 2005 General Election when it kicks off. So expect all sorts of fun as I get caught up in the bloody melee that is constituency politics...

More on that soon.

* Use of French to see if it annoys any US readers. In the interests of balance, I will try to annoy French readers too – if I have any.