johninnit

Satirical genius from Political Scrapbook, based on the Tories’ current poster campaign. This deserves to win the internet for today, tomorrow, and much of this week!

Amidst talk of changed strategy to duck the virtual and physical graffiti that’s dogged the Tories’ election posters so far, three new billboards have been unveiled today, detailing why people might like to consider crossing the floor and voting Tory for a change. None of them have the easy-to-deface looming face of Dave, but there’s a nice strapline and design style that should give ample room for parody.

MyDavidCameron.com are already on the case, and I’m looking forward to see how they rise to the challenge. The hashtag #ivenevervotedtory is already doing brisk business with lunchbreak surfers. Here’s my quick & dirty contribution to the fun.

The sinister Tory billboards are back with a vengeance, and so are their online alter-egos. The current posters are coming in for a bit of flack for attacking a Labour policy that isn’t actually a Labour policy. Still, it’s a nice scary picture, so MyDavidCameron.com has morphed into MyToryTombstone.com, with some very funny takes on the dramatic picture and the message gaffe. Here’s my own contribution to the fun (click for bigger).

Back to my roots in the Solent town of Gosport this weekend. It’s a quiet sort of place, 80,000 or so inhabitants, neighbouring and utterly overshadowed by Portsmouth. It’s one claim to fame of recent years is probably one it would rather forget – the town MP Sir Peter Viggers got caught out attempting to claim for a now legendary ‘floating duck island‘ on Parliamentary expenses. (more…)

Certainly impressed with the state of the art technology on MyConservatives.com!

I mean, being able to instantly automatically identify me as a wrong ‘un from my IP addy and targetedly refuse me access like this, whilst I imagine letting all the 2.0Tories straight in without any hiccups, that’s some mad skillz! Would expect nothing less from “probably the most advanced party political campaigning network of its kind outside of America”.

UPDATE 4/10/09: Here’s more on the story from El Reg. Admittedly much respect for the 404 pages though…

Tories under fire in the Guardian today for their non-dom tax plans, as it seems there may not actually be that many people to pay the non-dom charge. What surprised me most though was the tiny level of the charge – a fraction of what these people owe. Surely better to get as many as possible to pay a realistic tax rate (even if you want to be generous and give them some measure of a proportional discount for staying away) than to get lots of them coughing up peanuts? (more…)

Good spin for Redwood, getting the story of his wide-ranging policy review boiled down to just inheritance tax in the papers today, rather than coming over as an evil masterplan to work us til we drop, and then mortgage an unregulated timeshare to our remains. The structural flaws in the unreported iceberg seem to be getting bigger though, thanks to the Chancellor, the Work Foundation, the TUC, and even Railway Gazette.

Kicking off with the employment rights stuff that caused a stir earlier this week, the Work Foundation’s David Coates said:

“The UK is already a lightly regulated economy and there is no strong evidence to show that Mr Redwood’s proposals would increase our national prosperity. In contrast, it seems more likely that bad employers will exploit these measures to worsen the position of the most disadvantaged workers.”

The £14 billion saving from red tape looks pretty tenuous. Just dropping the minimum standards on employment rights won’t actually save money on the majority of jobs, for the simple reason that the majority of jobs exceed statutory minimum levels anyway. Redwood seems to have forgotten that there are a lot of decent employers out there, who wouldn’t want to jeopardise working relations by sinking to the depths that his changes would let them.

The people who would most likley see a reduction would be poorly paid, vulnerable workers with bad employers – the kind of people who need the protections most. There’s also less money to be saved in slashing the conditions of someone near the current minimum anyway – as meanness goes, it’s not even practical meanness.

Coates reckons Redwood’s economic analysis is pretty fundamentally flawed anyway:

“The OECD have made clear in their report, Going for Growth 2007 that the policy priorities for the UK are the reform of Incapacity Benefit, tackling basic skills problems, strengthening incentives for lone parents to return to work, investing in infrastructure and improving public service efficiency.

The deregulatory agenda has reached the end of the road. Other policy instruments must be used if the UK is to face the challenge of intensifying competition and rising skill levels in China and India, the emerging economic superpowers.

Most seriously, the proposals to withdraw from some key elements of European social policy are not consistent with the UK’s continued membership of the EU. Leaving the single market would do immense damage to British business. This would more than outweigh the supposed benefits of tearing up the Working Time Regulations “

The whole agenda on working time and the Social Chapter seems designed purely to pick a fight over Europe, regardless of its implications to the economy, and the TUC point out there even seem to be inconsistencies with Cameron’s earlier prononcements on flexbile and family friendly working, which draw heavily on working time rights.

And back to inheritance tax. It’s a middle England bugbear, even though it actually affects only a minority of the richest, and mainly the South East. The Express and Mail will get good campaign fodder out of it, but you could undercut much of the support by simply raising the exemption rate by another £100,000, and pegging it to house prices in the future. Straight off you’d lose most of the sting to voters without losing most of the income to the Treasury.

Myself, I’d rather see it left though, as it has a purpose wider than lining Darling’s pockets. Looking at the Express, you’d think this was the main thing holding people back from owning their own homes, but surely a braver case for it can be argued? Keeping assets from generation to generation entrenches income inequality, and is much more important a factor in taking home ownership out of most people’s reach. Waiting for your parents to croak just in order to get a house as part of a gated community in a sea of sink estates? Not the way I want to live.

I’m really coming round to how good this new Tory viral ad format is. I mean, loads of stuff must have doubled under Labour that they could make videos about. Got me thinking…

Nice note from Asabailey, viral marketing gurus and new Tory ad agency. I like their stuff a lot (my favourite of late has to be their Cannes Web2.0 song – more than a bit NSFW btw). Anyway, they’re showing the first of their new series of Tory attack ads on YouTube:

In response to Lord Saatchi’s most recent calls for the Conservative party to stop its “nicely nicely approach to advertising and PR” and to get back to basics, Asabailey have created this online viral and TV campaign to create debate between consumers and the media in the Midlands and the North of England, all as an early general election looks ever more likely.

Using real Mobile Phone style footage, and images of “life under Labour” the campaign highlights the darker sides of life in modern New Labour Britain and places the blame firmly at the feet of the current Labour government.

Call me old fashioned, but I thought it could be construed a bit of a cheek to bang on about teenage thuggery if you used to be in your own young ruffians gang. Or maybe Dave, George and Boris are able to understand the problem much better than Labour, having been there, done it (over) and so on.

Anyways, I thought I’d share it with you. Oops, silly me, now where did I put the original file… Is it this one?

Ah.. it all makes sense now:

Of the 27 members of David Cameron’s Shadow Cabinet, 12 have outside jobs with 32 directorships between them. The 120 members of the shadow government team hold 115 paid directorships or other outside posts between them. This means they rake in thousands on top of their £60,675-a-year MP salaries. Daily Mirror 15/08/07

This must be why John Redwood and George Osborne are so keen to bin the Working Time Directive. Poor things, they need all the hours they can get in the day to hold down all their other jobs.

An interesting argument I’d not considered before. Maybe the millions who would lose holidays under Redwood’s plans (down from already the shortest statutory paid holidays in Europe) should just stop worrying and get a few directorships instead?