Post-it

*bumped to top*

Somebody didn't get the memo....

Glad to see people at Labour HQ are keeping up.

Clearly the operation at HQ is not slick.

Yet another relaunch for Ed's "Labourspace"

Put your hands up if you can remember "labourspace.com"? No? Well it was a platform for Labour supporters to promote campaigns. It was launched/relaunched in 2008 (see here), then it was launched again, this time Ed Miliband in 2009 (see here).

The domain has now expired but guess what. Yes that's right boys and girls, it's been relaunched...... again (with a new name). Now its called the Campiagn Engine Room and it's massive popular.


So that's four launches of pretty much the same idea that was a flop each time.

New leader, same old shit, different name.

"Red" Ed's speech: Time for some 'Kremlinology'

If you're a politician, and leader no less, then you know that the words "this is going to be the speech of his life" will be said or written about you, although not many get that said about them two days into the job. Thus it was for "Red" Ed Miliband, but yet, I find myself wondering, what exactly is the guy's USP?

Is it too carry on the tradition of the previous leader by managing to wear suits that look as if they were measured again and made for someone else? Is it to out-slaphead the guy (now Foreign Secretary) that took over as leader of the Tories when they got kicked out of office in 1997? Question, question, questions!

Seriously though, today is the big one it seems for the commentariat. They're currently pouring over the speculations (read "pre-spinning") of what the n00b will say. The truth is, I imagine, that he will say very little because he doesn't really have to. In fact, he could come on stage and do a wet fart and the crowd would probably cheer him on.

The general thought and cliche is that he will "turn the page" on New Labour and essentially trash the record of his predecessor[s] to some extent. How long therefore will it take someone clever enough in the newspapers to note that the "Labour Party Conference 2010" should be renamed the "20th Congress of the Communist Party 1956"?


We had the insurgent revolutionary Blair (Lenin), followed by the Machiavellian calculating control freak Brown (Stalin) and now we've got the young Miliband who's going to denounce the other two. The comparison with Khrushchev at the 20th Congress in February 1956 is hardly rocket science now is it?

Now all he has to do is be weak, come up with policies that don't really work, whilst behind closed doors the whispering begins and people start maneuvering themselves for a Breschnevian takeover, then Ed can go and retire quietly in a flat in Priomrose Hill.

Now won't that be fun to watch?

Note: If some clever person would like to mash up Khrushchev and Miliband it would be greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: Thanks to "Angry Exile" for the mash-up of Edkita Milischev!

Silly lawsuits.....

There's nothing like a good tech story first thing in the morning, especially if it involved big companies taking on smaller companies where the big boys are desperately trying to trademark and take legal ownership of a word, for example, Apple and the word "pod".

Yes, Apple are going after an entrepreneur who has a video projection company with a product that started development in 2000 called "video pod". The date is important because the product was born before the "iPod" came to market.

This is, as the article notes, not the first time big tech companies have tried to trademark words. Facebook recently did it by filing a suit against "Teachbook", and then there's Microsoft and their attempts to own the word "Windows" - conveniently ignoring the fact the concept began life thanks to Xerox, naturally, and that without windows we're all in the dark.

Anyhow, this has got me pondering. If Apple are so stupid that they're going to go to court against a business that was using the word "pod" in a product name before they were, what's th betting that they'll go ahead and officially name their TV product "iTV" and then try to retrospectively sue errrr ITV?

More idiotic things have happened right?

Note: Those are vanilla pods in the picture. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Apple is considering a class action suit against God, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, Zeus and Apollo for intellectual property theft.

Tom Harris, Ed Miliband and electoral reform

A month or so ago, Tom Harris, the Labour MP and blogger, posted the image/poster on the right that rather eloquently proposes the argument for first-past-the-post over that of the alternative vote.

It's probably one of the best and most effective arguments against AV I've seen, and does rather illustrate the absurdness of a system where the person that finishes second or third might end up winning. As it says, "it's unfair and it doesn't make sense".

Anyhow, I mention this because Tom Harris posted yestedray about the new Labour leader, Ed Miliband. Tom supported the elder brother David as his post details.

However, what surprises me is that at no point does Tom put forward the very argument he supports in the poster. After all, his chosen candidate for leader won the first round, and the second, and the third but then got pipped in the fourth as the counting of votes, second, third, fourth preferences went on.

Surely the result is also "unfair" and "doesn't make sense"? No? I wonder too if Ed Miliband will be whipping his party to support AV in a referendum given he owes it to the system for the job he now has?

LBC should show Livingstone the door

So Ken Livingstone has been selected as the Labour candidate to face off against Boris Johnson... again. Round II as it were. However, here is the incredible thing. Until the campaign "officially" starts, Ken Livingstone will not have to give up his weekly Saturday morning LBC Radio show where he gets to pontificate to the whole of London.

Let me blunt and anglo-saxon. How fucked up is that?

Could you imagine if, the next Labour Party leader had a weekly current affairs talk show on BBC 1 talking to the entire nation? It wouldn't fly would it? Yet here we have the person that is the official candidate for the party of HM Opposition to be the CEO of London and he gets free airtime across the whole of London every week?

LBC should do the decent thing and politely show him the door.

Update: Comments have noted the "what about" issue of Boris Johnson having a weekly 50 word Telegraph columns in the "Opinion" section as justification. To this I would say that newspapers are not bound by the same rules as broadcasters when it comes to impartiality, and the Telegraph's circulation/readership nationally is probably not comparable in voter influence as a broadcast targetted at your electorate is.

Dear FoI Teams....

Under the previous Government, all FoI requests that I ever sent were responded to in email beginning with "Dear Mr Hendren".

Since the birth of Coalition this appears to have changed so email responses begin with simply, "Phil".

Have you ever heard the idiom "familiarity breeds contempt"?

BBC Live coverage of the Lib Dem Conference?

Continuing to sink the reds, before using the yellow to get rid of the brown, and then screwing back for the blue.

Resolving the problem of errant pet hair

Get yourself a furminator.
Note: May have alternate uses.