Wardman Wire Magazine

I have the Top 30 Wikio UK Blogs for November.

I am going to Twitter them in reverse order at 5 minute intervals starting at 6pm.

You can follow my Twitter Feed here:

http://twitter.com/mattwardman

I can reveal now that about 28 out of 30 are political blogs.

The Conservatives are beginning to really start pushing the online battle back towards Labour. I commented a while back on the Labour’s far more web-orientated economic propaganda - even though it was pretty useless, as it was too large to be embedded in a blog, even in the main post!
But since then, the Conservatives have [...]

You can read my detailed assessment here.

I’d suggest that the crucial aspects here are process issues:

1 - The violation of Commons privilege.

2 - The facts taken behind the “the police have operational control and have not overstepped the mark” position taken by the Cabinet Ministers. Politically the next question is obvious:

Just who moved the mark to a place where this became possible, Mr Brown?

Practically, the question is different:

How do we move the mark that the police did not go beyond to somewhere more suitable for an advanced democracy?

Realistically, that is only going to happen in 2 scenarios, either a Tory majority, or a hung Parliament as a condition of Lib Dem cooperation with a minority administration.

The Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green has been arrested, in relation to the supply to the media of information leaked from within the Home Office embarrassing to the Government.

Mr Green is the MP for Ashford in Kent, and was detained for 9 hours after being arrested by 9 policemen for an alleged offence of “Conspiracy to Commit Misconduct in Public Office”. He has been released on bail to return for further questioning in February.

He has denied any wrongdoing after bring arrested for allegedly leaking information to the media.

The arrest was after an investigation following a complaint received from the Cabinet Office. Boris Johnson was informed of the arrest in advance in his role as Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

The arrest was in connection with alleged leaked information relating to media stories about immigration.

Privacy international have published a survey of the “effects of new counter-terrorism laws on media and free expression rights in European countries”.

It is a report about the extension of laws which impact on human rights and freedom from interception of communications, through freedom of expression to photography in the street.

“Caveats” are the limitations by which countries which forces in Afghanistan place limitations on the scope of operation of their Armed Forces. The Government was questioned in the Lords on 25/11/2008 about this.

Lord Malloch-Brown, the Labour Minister responsible refuses to discuss caveats, the despite the fact that the NATO Commander will do so in public.

He claims that working in secret is a better “approach” out of “respect” for our Allies, but does not even bring the information to the House of Lords to demonstrate whether that approach has worked or not over an entire 12 month period.

The people being disrespected here are us, and our political process.

I’ve been playing with some leftish (and a couple of rightish) political blogging anagrams.

• Openish
• Probe Cynical Liars
• Never a Sadist
• Aho! Mob Rule.
• Become Livid or .. er .. I Led Vice Mob.
• Achieves Vent Room
• Redeeming Us
• Curios Void
• Descendants Endpoint

And - before anyone starts on me:

• Warn Mad Matt