Balls on Marr

Not exactly unexpected; but here it is anyway: Ed Balls trying to spin the line that "there was no debt, except that caused by bankers, and no deficit under Labour" - or something very close to that (it's a bit fuzzy!) despite the easily-provable facts:



UPDATE 31 Jan: Full Facts seems to disagree with Balls as well...

Tweet of the day - 29 Jan 2011

From Harry Cole, on-site witness to the London student protest, in response to Labourite "PennyRed" (Laurie Penny):

"RT @PennyRed: Five thousand protesters still stopping traffic on Park Lane <- I'm on a bus there right now. It's barely a hundred."

As usual, Labour folk lying, as they are wont to do...

Meanwhile, in Manchester, National Union of Students leader Aaron Porter has been turned upon by those he led to that demo, and here is being escorted away from the scene by police "for his own safety"(!)

Egypt

Here is a link to some amazing photos of the situation in Egypt, courtesy of Reuters. There are few more at MSNBC here.

UPDATE 29 Jan @ noon: Reuters (again) now also have a one-minute clip of footage taken in Cairo this morning.

Tower Hamlets post-script

The Labour party (of all people) have conducted an investigation and found that the new mayor, independent Lutfur Rahman, was elected with the aid of a number of 'voters' who had been added to the local Labour membership, but who did not actually exist.

There weren't enough of them to tip the balance by themselves, and produce a different electoral result; but there are other matters that - if they too were to be investigated - might then reach that level (or they might not: who knows?).

Andrew Gilligan is, as ever, on top of this and reports in very useful detail, as he has with previous episodes in this long-running story. The most telling extract, that informs us about the way election-rigging is attempted in certain places, is this:

"the Tower Hamlets electoral roll has gone up and down like a yoyo from year to year, depending on whether there are significant elections that year."

Although small variations can legitimately occur and those are expected, it really is far greater than natural changes in population and even a modest increase in registrations in electoral years could perhaps explain. There is now such a history of such things going on as Gilligan has previously reported, possibly coming to wide attention for the first time earlier this century in Birmingham.

For some reason, it nearly always seems to be Asian (usually Muslim) dominated communities where this happens. I don't know what if anything can be deduced from this, but the records show it very clearly. It is also predominantly Labour or ex-Labour candidates and their associates who have so far been found out and (in some cases) prosecuted.

While nothing conclusive should be drawn from this, as nothing is absolute in this arena, it should help inform us and possibly even allow to weigh up candidates' and parties' claims and attitudes when it comes to our own elections, especially here in London.

Tweet of the day - 26 Jan 2011

From Harry Cole (formerly Tory Bear) on today's Prime Minister's Questions:

"[Tom] Baldwin is giving Mili the ammo but he just cannot fire it properly."

It is notable that David Cameron won easily against Ed Miliband's sometimes quite nasty and occasionally desperate and shouted attacks.