Good morning and welcome to the Voice’s early morning roundup of news and views. It’s 5th November, an anniversary we can all remember, when Guy Fawkes didn’t quite manage to get his suggestions for MPs’ expense reform through Parliament. It’s also Art Garfunkel’s birthday – he’s 68 today.
2 Big Stories
Bloody betrayal raises fresh doubts about Britain’s campaign in Afghanistan
The Times carries the story most papers are leading with this morning.
The killing of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman raised fresh doubts yesterday about Britain’s mission in Helmand.
Senior political, diplomatic and military figures warned that public support for the British presence was in danger of collapse without a clear and freshly defined strategy.
Meanwhile, the Guardian has one of the more startling headlines I’ve read recently:
France: ‘Autistic Tories have castrated UK in Europe’
Sacré bleu!
Speaking to the Guardian, Pierre Lellouche, France’s Europe minister, described as “pathetic” the Tories’ EU plans announced today, warning they would not succeed “for a minute”.
Giving vent to frustration across the EU, which has so far only been expressed in private, Lellouche – who said he was reflecting Nicolas Sarkozy’s “sadness and regret” – accused William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, of a “bizarre autism” in their discussions.
Quel horreur! Mind you, I see Charlotte Gore’s point when she tweets: “a French Minister slagging off the Tories? Guardian Reader’s letters to Bush voters springs to mind.” Still – there’s a solution, since the Independent is currently running a story that says cannabis cures autism.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
- Caron’s Musings: Jenny Willott lives on state pension for a week
An interesting social experiment being carried out by a Lib Dem MP – and if it hadn’t been for Caron, I’d not have realised it was going on.
I guess the other thing to think about is that Jenny is getting the full State Pension whereas many women don’t qualify for even that paltry amount because they either worked part time, took time out to have children or look after elderly relatives. Some may have been badly advised decades ago and made decisions that it is now impossible to rectify because nobody will take responsiblity for the mistake.
I think Cameron will be a disastrous Prime Minister if he gets the chance: another Tony Blair but without the steel. His photo in the Guardian yesterday summed it up perfectly, something which Alastair Campbell has been mercilessly taking the mickey out of. It really is the most excrutiating photo of Cameron since That Bullingdon group shot. Here is a man who clearly puts more thought into his image than into his policies. The result is that both end up pretty laughable.
Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.
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2 Comments
I looked at it again this morning to see if the Tory proposals make any more sense, and they still don’t. I have no idea what they are intending to do.
Lord Paddy Ashdown has a trenchant piece in the `Times’ today -Afghanistan could be lost in the bars of Britain’.
He argues that `it is the political ,not militarty level we are failing…
Paddy Ashdown advocates more `local structures’ to be opened up in the governance in Afghanistan.