Stuff I'm reading

I've never done links before - what really is the point of a blog with as little traffic as this one directing people to more read blogs? But I was bored and read some good stuff across blogs recently

I start with Chris Leslie MP at Labour Uncut chronicling 100 regressive measures by the coalition  in their first 100 days in power

UK Polling Report has an excellent post on why Sky's poll which has Labour on 24% and the Lib Dems on 8% is completely bogus

The Enemies of Reason has a piece on bullying about weight in the Daily Mail, something which extends beyond the articles and into the comments, a subject I've covered myself

Minority Thought is excellent as always with his post on 'fury' in the Daily Express

Beyond the blogsphere, I've been reading the excellent George Monbiot book 'The Age Of Consent' which has got me thinking, expect a blogpost on it when I've finished.

That's my lot for now.

Wilful misinterpretation from the Daily Mail...

... in this article about a woman who was fined £75 for littering, headlined: "Smoker faces £2,500 fine... for dropping cigarette ash on pavement." As one heavily negatively rated comment said:

"Second SHE HAS NOT BEEN FINED £2500 FOR LITTERING!

She has been fined £75 for littering. The extra £2,425 is for being an idiot."

Damn right. As well as lying about the fine the Mail has seemingly lied about why she received the fine, in the first place, in their first line reporting that:

"An elderly widow has been threatened with a £2,500 fine by council officials for dropping cigarette ash on the pavement."

If that was indeed the case the woman in question is well within her rights to appeal, but in the penultimate paragraph, as usual buried, is the response from the council:

"'In general terms, however, our wardens do not issue fixed penalty notices for dropping cigarette ash. They do for dropping cigarette butts, which are specifically classed as litter under the Environmental Protection Act."

Ah, so she dropped the butt, so that's littering and although the fine may be heavy handed, she has no real defence.

And finally, another small lie, the woman is not being threatened with a £2,500 fine, if you look at the letter close up you can see that she could be liable for a fine of 'up to £2,500.' Just a small one, but it adds to the general deception of the article. Classic Mail.

The Coral - Butterfly House

I promised to expand this blog into new areas, so I'm going to review the new album from one of my favourite bands in the world - The Coral - who have come up with their first album since the masterpiece that was 2007's Roots and Echoes. Their new album entitled Butterfly House is no huge leap from their previous ones, in some ways it moves forward but in other ways it seems a backward step,

It all starts off well enough with one of my favourite songs off the album, "More Than A Lover", which hints at a more intense album, but is ultimately a just a very good Coral song, expanding on what has come before, and one of the few instantly catchy songs on the album. Leading on from that "Roving Jewel" hints at an expanded sound, with the use of a harmonica building on a typically Coral melody.

The album has its share of memorable songs, "1000 Years" the first single off the album is the closest the band get to a "Dreaming Of You" type song, and like the first track is instantly catchy, but despite the fact that the band try to expand on their sound, it's arguable whether they improve it.

There are other good songs on the album however, "Green Is The Colour" has a slower tempo than most Coral songs and the album benefits from this change up, as it does from the calmer tones of "Walking In The Winter." "Falling All Around You" does what it tries to well as a pretty acoustic and piano driven number, and "Coney Island" shows what the band can do sometimes when they try something new, being perhaps their darkest song to date, with an off kilter edge and circus type vibe.

This album in many ways seems trapped between continuing to churn out very good songs which are a bit repetitive, and trying to change things and make this their magnum opus. This is most obviously shown through the differences between "Into The Sun" which instantly feels like you've heard it before with the melody bearing some similarities to several songs off their previous albums and the darker "Coney Island which sounds slightly more like their eponymous debut but with an extra edge.

Despite some of the flaws, I would give the album 3 and 1/2 stars, and recommend it for further listening. There are seventeen good songs on the Butterfly House and that may well be too many. There are no complete flops on the album but it, just goes on for too long. If you cut out the last four songs and the bloated "North Parade" you come out with another 4 star Coral album which delivers a sharp set of good tunes.

Rise of the body fascists - Curse of the Mail comments

I'm just going to get straight to it, here is some immense stupidity in the comments of a Jan Moir opinion piece. Who would have thought it? Ignoring the article, which isn't that bad, just incredibly boring to me, let's dive straight into the comments, starting with this gem from Cindy Chaplin

""Curvier"? How I hate that word. What you mean is "fatter". Why can't people just say so?"

Interesting point Cindy, so in the spirit of straight talking, instead of saying: "You have an interesting name" I will from now on tell idiots like you that "You have a stupid name." That feels a lot better, I like all this insulting; "Cindy Chaplin you are a colossal brainfart."

Jane in Brighton has another interesting bit of body fascism:

"TRANSLATION: I don't take care what I eat, I stuff myself and drink too much, I don't take any exercise.............BUT I still want to look like an attractive, slim woman. 


GET REAL, PLEASE."

Insinuating that all women who are larger than a size 12 are fatties who stuff their faces? Check. Insinuating that only slim women can be attractive? Check. Shouting because everyone CAN'T HEAR YOU OTHERWISE? Check. Congratulations Jane, you've managed to live in one of the liberal capitals of Britain and become one of the biggest body fascists in the Daily Mail comments.

Now one from a man, maybe he can bring some sense to proceedings. Unfortunately he can't, over to you Alan...

"Let us be quite honest sizes 16 / 18 + can never be elegant and certainly not as you say "real womanly". Ms Moir there are actually places in the world where slim trim and elegant are the national norm and where women are very much real. Stop making excuses for the UK trend towards over eating and lack of exercise, instead try to instill some pride of appearance into our womenfolk. Oh and by the way, start at first base, yourself."

Oh, just fuck off.

See the connection? The Daily Mail and their readers don't.

As all intelligent people who ever read the Daily Mail know, the newspaper isn't the most consistent, but these two articles I noticed today just magnified this.To compound it they were both placed in the same box of stories, almost next to each other:

Does the Mail seriously not see the links between the two stories? Let's first look at the "Council carried out out risk assessment on boy, 14, who wanted to mow tiny patch of village grass" story. This fits into the normal Mail narrative of something being stopped by the 'Elf and Safety brigade,' and if you didn't read the actual story it would be quite reasonable to expect that they stopped him from mowing the grass. Turns out they didn't and just carried out a slightly lengthy risk assessment.


My issue with the Mail here isn't their coverage of the story which doesn't blame it on the 'elf and safety brigade' but on council red tape, but more the fact that they saw fit to cover the story in the first place. In the consideration of whether a story is newsworthy, one of the things to be considered by the editor is what reaction it will engender from the readers. The Mail is perfectly aware that this story, fitting into their overall narrative of 'red tape' 'elf and safety' and appealing to their readers hatred of bureaucracy is going to enrage their readers and therefore they don't dig too deep and look for the real reason behind red tape and bureaucracy.

The real reason, in many cases is the compensation culture that is prevalent in many parts of society these days, as illustrated in this article: "Mother sues National Trust for £300,000 after son, 11, is killed by falling branch during visit to stately home"

This story is a relatively simple one and it is chosen mostly because it again advances a tabloid narrative, the 'compensation culture' that their readers will get worked up about. The same readers might comment with something like: "this cultural [sic] of litigation is getting out of hand" and then go over to the other article and comments something about how this bureaucracy is getting out of hand without making the link between the two, in that the bureaucracy  is often caused by the culture of litigation, often fuelled by the tabloids. It seems like concious doublethink on the Mail's part but it just feeds their readers stupidity and stops them seeing the full story beyond their narratives.

Maybe it's not doublethink by the Mail, maybe it's just plain and simple stupidity or the fact that the articles may be written by different journalists. However, the people in charge - Dacre and his sub-editors - must notice the direction their newspaper is taking and unless they're just completely stupid, it's just deliberately misleading to the readers, fuelling their prejudices.

Basically, what the Daily Mail does best.

Very little ever changes

In between watching the cricket this afternoon, I've started reading John Simpson's book "Unreliable Sources." I got the book for my birthday several months ago, and started reading it but only got through the first chapter for some reason. When I returned to it today I started reading a chapter on the reporting of Immigration at the beginning of the 20th century.

The only things that seem to have changed between then and now are the targets of the attacks and the fact that journalists now have to be a bit more subtle, but only a bit. The main attacks are by the same suspects now as they were then: the Express and the Mail. One telling quote is when Simpson says:

"The Express was almost comically virulent, looking for every possible way of stirring up feeling against the immigrants"

Some of the headlines are strikingly similar to ones used today, the Express running a headline "Alien Horde for Great Britain" and "Alien Horde Coming." Some however were as Simpson says, comical: "NATION MADDER. CAUSES OF INSANITY. MENACED BY ALIENS"

The link between immigration and crime, however erroneous is as common now as it was then, the small improvement over the century being that it no longer verified by dodgy science such as that practised by Dr. Ernest W. White in the Express of 1st August 1903

In his article the psychologist speaks of immigrants "with poor bodies and poorer minds", "of the criminal type", "in many cases with neurotic inheritances" and warns that "If no stop is put to this, the stability of the race, mental as well as physical, will be undermined"

It's just a good thing that dodgy science like this is no longer practiced in the tabloids today.

Oh. And some more

A bit of housekeeping

After a promising 2009, I feel I've neglected this blog a little this year, and the decision to start a new blog - A Cultural Philistine - detailing my seemingly unsuccessful attempt to watch 100 films I'd never seen before in a year may have been a bad idea, splitting my rare blogging between two rarely updated blogs.

So I've decided that this blog needs a bit of a new beginning, all my old posts will stay but I'm going to attempt to start blogging regularly again and basically expanding this blog from politics and the media to more diverse topics, meaning that this blog will hopefully become a lot more interesting to read.

With a new start comes a new name, Allsorts was frankly a filler name and I've thought long and hard about a new one, and my final answer is...

Leftish Tendency.

Mail speculation - Mostly wrong

At least that's what I think...

So I'm going to put it to the test, as often as possible I'm going to pull some Mail speculation out and comment on it, record it and wait until the truth becomes obvious.

Today it's "Is it a Dannii boy? X Factor judge Minogue drops a big hint about the sex of her unborn child"

The major speculation in this is that the unborn child of Dannii Minogue is a boy because of a picture of a babygro seemed to be one for a baby boy. For one, some baby clothes can be quite unisex, and isn't it also possible that the couple don't want to know until it is born and are buying some stuff for both eventuality.

In any case, all this is pure speculation, and in a couple of months time I'm sure all will be revealed. I would just love it, if the Mail managed to guess wrong in a 50/50 situation.

EDIT: Oh bollocks, I managed to pull out one of the rare occasions where the Daily Mail gets something right.

I don't normally single out comments...

... but this one from Polly Toynbee's excellent rebuttal of Call Me Dave's Guardian comment piece is so stupid in a 'clearly this person has some intelligence' kinda way.

Unlike a lot of BBC Have Your Say comments, it is properly punctuated and readable, but still monumentally wrong in almost every way

Taking it from the beginning...

So not such bad chaps really. If only they could get rid of "Dave" and give us someone else. David Davis perhaps. These policies are just sensible. There is no reason to be anything other than skeptical of the climate change case, bankers' pay caps are asinine, regulation is the problem and the 50p top tax rate is just idiotic.

Wow. Where to start? The ludicrous climate change denial, lack of commitment to cutting wages the wages of and taxing the very top earners, on to the most astonishing thing ever... 'regulation is the problem.' I pray you're not talking about the unrestrained financial sector which got us in this mess in the first place. Maybe they're just talking about regulation in general,  something which makes it even stupider.

Continuing the stupidity... Thatcher was a progressive. Right, that makes sense.

I assume that in her rush to get words that press all her readers' buttons - fundamentalist for instance - Ms Toynbee has sacrificed common sense and logical coherence. If it is a return to Conservative roots - and it isn't - then of course it is a change. It is progress, of sorts. Thatcher was a radical and a progressive. Dave is not. Just because you don't like the direction she took the country doesn't mean she did not bring about real change.

Progress does not mean going backwards you utter tool! 'Just because you don't like the direction she took the country .' You mean backwards right? 'doesn't mean she did not bring about real change.' Change in a backwards direction is regression you rhetorically challenged buffoon.

The worst thing about all of this is, that this is a typical Tory voter who demonstrates why Cameron's 'caring conservatives' are not the progressives they claim to be. It's enough to make you go and smash your brains out on a wall.

Paul Wiffen - The UKIP racist standing in my constituency

It has been said many times before that UKIP are the BNP for middle class people who aren't openly racist, but harbour those sort of thoughts, and it appears that this may actually be true.

The Telegraph reports that Paul Wiffen - the London UKIP chair and PPC for Ilford South - has been suspended from any party positions (but still allowed to campaign for UKIP in his constituency) for this racist rant on the website Community Care...

Britain is full, you prat! Even your scummy, illiterate Grauniad admits it!

In the circumstances, I think "get lost" is positively polite. "Go forth and multiply" elsewhere would be my wording.

You left-wing scum are all the same, wanting to hand our birthright to Romanian gypsies who beat their wives and children into begging and stealing money they can gamble with, Muslim nutters who want to kill us and put us all under mediaeval Sharia law, the same Africans who sold their Afro-Caribbean brothers into a slavery that Britain was the first to abolish (but you still want to apologize for!)

Worry about where we are going to live and grow food, you wanker, not the UKIP policy that might just save your worthless skin! 

I shouldn't be surprised that this sort of idiocy has emerged from UKIP, but this is a colossal mistake just before an election. 

Digging deeper it seems surprising that this story first broke in Hugh Muir's Guardian diary almost a week ago yet it took until today for the Telegraph and BBC London News to pick it up. Muir commented that...

The end came quickly. We rang Ukip, and though he seemed quite defiant when we rang him, they last night suspended him from any party position with a view to disciplinary proceedings. He was a character. But he hardly seemed very nice.

Still the question remains, if UKIP aren't a racist party, why aren't they stopping him standing in Ilford South and why isn't any of this on their website.

Perhaps the funniest part of the whole this is his apology...

Explaining what sparked his outburst he said: “I was very surprised to see such a party political piece on a website called Community Care, and when I read the lies about Ukip being a racist party, I just saw red and fired off an angry email.

So he saw someone saying that UKIP were racist, and proceded to prove them right... some things are beyond satire.

Cameron - Burglars have no human rights

Conservative Home reports what will be a massive clanger for David Cameron to drop on the politics show, the tory leader saying...

"The moment a burglar steps over your threshold, and invades your property, with all the threat that gives to you, your family and your livelihood, I think they leave their human rights outside."

This is the sort of rubbish that the tory party will lap up, but reading further in, it's obvious he doesn't know what he's talking about. Do they lose this human right perhaps?

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

So, if a burglar enters your home you have the right to hold then as long as you like and force them into your servitude. 

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

So, people are allowed to torture burglars now. Great, I'll get the rack out.

There are many other examples, but I won't go into all of them. The point is, Cameron should be more careful about what he says, saying something like that chimes in many ways with UKIP and the BNP. 

Maybe the quote has been taking a little out of context by Montgomery, but if it hasn't this is worrying news indeed

Just A Minute

I'd be very grateful if anyone could watch my A2 media coursework short film and answer the evaluation questions. Thanks.

Are you interested in politics?
Would you choose to watch a political drama or comedy usually?
What did you think in general about the film?
Were there any obvious flaws with the film?
Did you empathise with the prime minister character?
Did you find that the film had comic value?
Did you understand what was happening in the film?
Did you see the editing enhancing or damaging the film?
Did you feel the writing was of a high quality?
Did you feel that the camerawork was professional?

People banned from being naked near children - IT'S HEALTH AND SAFETY GONE MAD

Right, I haven't plumbed the depths of idiocy contained within the Daily Mail website for weeks now, so I have a double dose of rubbish from the last couple of days for you to enjoy... starting with a familiar case of double standards.

This story of the local pool where people were asked not to shower naked is full of the usual Mail hypocrisy. The headline is:

"Swimming pool users banned from showering naked in case children are offended"

This seems to suggest that it was a pre-emptive PC gone mad type of banning, done 'in case' people who may or not be offended are. However in the second paragraph it goes on to say that...

"Bathers have been told to keep their swimming costumes on while using the showers following complaints from local schools that pupils were offended by 'open nudity' and needed 'a certain amount of privacy.'

Which clearly states that the ban was enforced AFTER complaints not IN CASE OF complaints.

Still the Mail continues with its dog whistle journalism, even managing to stick in this gem.

Swimmers who regularly use the Torridge Pool in Northam, Devon, described the rule as 'health and safety gone mad.'

Surely it's PC gone mad, you've got your 'gone mad's' mixed up there because I can't see any way this is a health and safety issue.

"Local councillor Hugh Bone said the decision was 'ridiculous' and vowed to fight the ban by continuining to showering in the nude.

Grandfather-of-four Hugh said: 'This surely is ridiculous. People should not believe that we are all perverts.

'Boys and men as well as girls and women have always changed in front of each other and this is part of the growing up experience."

Apply this quote to another Mail article, say this one... and we have a paedophile, ready to be vilified for exposing himself to children. You see, the Daily Mail are brilliant at taking quotes out of context.

Nadine Dorries is wrong (again)

It's with little surprise that I read Nadine Dorries latest blog postand concluded that she is stupid and wrong.

It's all about the Tories confused and frankly pointless marriage tax credits policy and this time she really out does herself, defending Cameron's botch job of a policy.

She starts by saying...

It is a statistical and evidence based fact that couples who are married try harder at keeping a family together

No it isn't, what is statistical and evidence based is the fact that less people who are married break up. That's a totally different thing. She's got the causal relationship the wrong way round, people who are married break up less not because they've made the commitment, but because they are in more stable relationships regardless of the commitment. You could argue that Dorries point is correct, but it isn't based on evidence and statistics.

Only 1:11 married couples split before their child’s fifth birthday whereas that figure is 1:3 for co-habiting couples.

Again a case of 'lies, damn lies, and statistics.' The age of five seems to have been plucked from the air, and what follows is even worse...

Sadly, when marriage or relationship breakdown occurs, it is often the children who are caught in the middle. Would any child, when asked the question ‘would you prefer it if your mum and dad stayed together rather than split up’, answer ‘no’? 

What she says in the second part seems to directly contradict the first. In many cases the parents divorcing may be the best thing for the kids, if the parents are creating a bad environment with the bad feeling towards each other. A quite pointless over generalisation based on spurious evidence.

Even those children in dysfunctional families still love both parents and the fact that the "togetherness" of two parents provides them with double the security and parenting.

In most cases the parents don't care or parent any less when they have got divorced. In fact many make more of an effort to try to overcome the barriers of divorce.

We are all aware of the problems we face in the society within which we live today.

Yes, there are some bad things going on in society. I'm sure you won't over-generalise or scaremonger though.

Having spent a week on a council estate, where marriage is not even a part of the vocabulary, where literally thousands of single mums fail to control teenage boys and where stabbings, shootings, drugs and all level of general crime are a part of the fabric of council estate life, I am even more resolved in my own commitment to the fact that we absolutely have to return to the values which we know once kept our society stable and law abiding.

Was I being too hopeful? I think so. 'Marriage isn't even part of the vocabulary!' Now that's just plain bollocks. This is starting to read like an article from the Daily Mail. Especially with the harking back to the golden era where everything was fine and nothing bad ever happened to anyone.

If not least because it’s those who struggle to bring up a family and do the decent thing that pick up the bill for the rest.

Oh, 'doing the decent thing' again. What are single mothers whose husbands have left them supposed to do? Struggle along on their own as not to burden everyone else?

That bill may be financial, as we all have to pay extra taxes to fund the benefit system, the police, social services, security within schools, and the entire public service cost of a society in meltdown, or for some people the cost is more personal and real.

'Society in meltdown!!!' Stop being so fucking melodramatic Nadine.

My law abiding hard working constituent, who was attacked in London on New Years Eve by a youth who had no father he knew of and had been released from a young offenders institute just before Christmas, has some very strong opinions on this.

'law abiding hard working'... God this is starting to sound like a Littlejohn column, Not all people on benefits commit crime.

The values which we know provide the framework for a decent and law abiding society have to be championed once again. I’m delighted that David Cameron has picked up the gauntlet and I know that if he becomes Prime Minister we will at the end of his first five years be able to look at the family and say, ‘yes, it’s in a much stronger place than it was five years ago’, and that has to be a good thing for us all.

Bollocks.

If everyone else is doing them...

... I suppose I should do some predictions for the year ahead. Some in the world of politics, some in the media and a bit of sport to add to the mix. Let's go:

1) The Conservative party will win a small majority at the general election and tear themselves apart over Europe.
2) After losing the general election, Labour will elect David Milliband as their new leader.
3) My football team Leyton Orient will get relegated from League 1
4) England will get to the semi-finals of the World Cup and lose to Germany
5) Peter Mandleson will be parachuted into a safe Labour seat at the General Election
6) Jan Moir will leave the Mail after another huge twitterstorrm against another poisonous article.
7) The Lib Dems will get a new leader at some point during the year
8) I will get 50 comments on my two blogs combined.
9) England will draw the Ashes series in Australia 1-1
10) Lewis Hamilton will win the Formula 1 world championship by less than 5 points from Jenson Button

Prescott v Taxpayers Alliance

Earlier today, Guido Fawkes blogged 'Prezza Loses BBC Battle' in relation to John Prescott's letter to the BBC's Helen Boaden in which he asked:

I would therefore be keen to hear your views on the Guardian’s revelations and whethertheTaxPayers’ Alliance’s should now be referred to on air as “a group with close links to the Conservative Party” or some similar on-air clarification.

Boaden replied with:

"..whilst it is clear to me that the TPA is a conservative (small "c") organisation I do not think it would be accurate or fair to describe it on air, as you suggest, as "a group with close links to the Conservative Party.

I do accept that the TPA's publicatons and policies come from a distinctive political position and think we should try to avoid our output giving the impression that it is an impartial body."

Now I don't know about you but this seems rather a tame battle, Guido ended with:

Prezza is Twittering that this means “we’ve had some real success”. How?

Well, he asked if there could be an on air clarification about the TPA, and he has got one, not the one he wanted but this was 'real success' because it is another step on the road to the TPA being exposed as what they are. Once there is enough evidence I'd hope

One of the reasons that the BBC may have been reluctant to call the TPA "“a group with close links to the Conservative Party” may be the amount of anti-BBCfeeling within the right wing, and this is the sort of story about BBC 'bias' that would be jumped straight on by right wing rags like the Mail. The fact that they are right wing is pretty incontrovertible and is a logical if not entirely satisfactory compromise by the corporation.

The Taxpayers Alliance - A funny kind of independence

The most annoying campaign group/Tory front will be facing a quite considerable dilemma after the general election if everything goes as it looks likely to. If the Tories form a government, the Taxpayers Alliance will have to decide whether they continue to keep up the façade of being an independent campaign group that will campaign against anything the government of the time does, or admit to being a Tory front and not actually take the new government to task at all.

The signs look ominous, looking at the TPA's last set of press stories which they have whored themselves out to,  three of them are the same story, based on councils not picking up rubbish over the Christmas period. All of these stories are in right wing rags, and attacking Northampton, Walsall, and Oxford councils. A quick bit of research reveals that Oxford is run by a Labour council, Northampton by a Lib Dem council, and Walsall by a Tory council. Yet why does the TPA never seem to mention in its blogs or press releases the sort of stuff that Jon Cruddas and Chuka Umunna are now flagging up on Tory Stories is done by the Conservative party. There are very few if any negative mentions of the Conservative party across the TPA’s blogs.

This all comes back to one simple issue, the TPA don't want to admit that they are a Tory front organisation, even though it is painfully obvious, from the right wing rags they appear in (Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph) to the way that they never mention anything that the Tories are doing wrong in local government, to the fact that they are run by the likes of Andrew Allum who "led the student Conservative groups both in Imperial College and across London and sat on the national committee of the student wing of the party." and  “From 1998 to 2002 Andrew served as a Conservative member of Westminster City Council.” “He left the party in 2003” but hasn’t been too critical of it since. Matthew Elliott’s profile on their site shows their obvious connections with the Tories: 

“In 2006, the TPA won the ConservativeHome “One to Watch” award and in 2007 the Bumper Book of Government Waste was awarded the Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Award. In November 2007, Matthew was presented with the Conservative Way Forward ‘One of Us’ award by William Hague and in December the TPA won the Stockholm Network's prestigious Golden Umbrella award for Innovation. In 2008, the TPA was named 'Pressure Group of the Year' by the readers of Iain Dale's Diary”

With all of this evidence, how can they not admit that they may be independent in name, their whole existence is to highlight what Labour have done wrong, while ignoring all the Tories are doing wrong in local government and taking all the plaudits they can from the Conservative party. That’s a funny kind of independence.

Is a Labour-Tory coalition unthinkable? Of course it is you fool

Martin Kettle seems to have lost it, as today in Comment is Free he decides that - contrary to all previous thinking - a Labour-Tory coalition is possible in the next general election. Where to start?

One significant option seems perversely unexplored – the big one: a deal between the two largest parties. That's right, between the Conservatives and Labour. Merely to state this possibility is doubtless to invite derision, and worse. For many on both sides a Conservative-Labour deal is in every respect the politically unthinkable.

It's unthinkable because it will never happen, and vice-versa. Can you imagine the reaction of the grass-roots of either party? Despite the fact that they have both moved closer to the centre in recent years, most Labour voters/members/politicians despise the other party.

It is nevertheless worth asking and answering, calmly, one simple question: Why not? The question deserves to be taken seriously for three main reasons. The first is that British elections are becoming increasingly fragmented. Votes and seats are shared between more parties than before. No large party can today count on automatic 40%-plus support as both Labour and the Tories once did. Inter-party deals have become common in the devolved authorities and local government. The trend would become more pronounced under a reformed Westminster electoral system.

The second reason is that some of the ancient differences between the main parties have blurred. This is sometimes misrepresented as "the parties becoming all the same", which is untrue. Nevertheless, some of the extremes of the past have been abandoned and some of the differences of today are more nuanced and pragmatic. Like football fans, British political parties retain a tribal culture, but the parties, like the football clubs, have learned they must adapt or perish.

The third reason is that, on occasion, needs must. There are practical arguments why, in some circumstances, an arrangement between the biggest parties might be the most viable option. A government of this kind might also do a good job, and might even be popular, too. Opinion polls certainly suggest as much.

The question also deserves to dismissed becuse of three main reasons...

1) Labour hate the Tories

2)Tories hate Labour

3) Despite at the top being closer than ever, at grass-roots level they are ideologically as far apart as ever

The idea is just crazy, both parties are closer to the Lib Dems ideologically so they are the perfect coalition partners.

I'd like to state categorically that this will not happen, if it does, I'll eat my face.