David Cameron wants to send me money (not)

A politically savvy phishing email has just arrived in my inbox:

My working partner has helped me to send your
first payment of US$7,500 to you as
instructed by Mr. David Cameron and will
keep sending you US$7,500 twice a week until
the payment of (US$360,000) is completed
within six months and here is the information
below:

MONEY TRANSFER CONTROL NUMBER (MTCN):
841-116-3297

SENDER'S NAME: Mr.Alexander Onyibor
AMOUNT: US$7,500

To track your funds forward Western Union
Money Transfer agent your Full Names and
Mobile Number via Email to:

Mr Gary Moore
E-mail:western.uniontransfer@w.cn
D/L: Tel:+447045713697

Please direct all enquiring to:
western.uniontransfer@w.cn

Best Regards,
Mrs. Mr Gary Moore.

Hmm. Hasn't this scamster heard there's a recession on and the Prime Minister is more likely to be demanding money than giving it to me?

The dreaded vote of confidence

Which is more believable:

The Prime Minister's full support for Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt following his Hillsborough gaffe

or

The G20's full support for the UK's plans to tackle Government debt?

Congratulations to Duncan and Jo

Many congratulations to Lib Dem MPs Jo Swinson and Duncan Hames who have got engaged.

Those of us who (were sad enough to have) logged on to Twitter after getting home last night were in the virtual front row for the whole event.

Just after midnight, Duncan (@duncanhames) tweeted:

'Asking the question.'

Which was followed by Jo (@joswinson) responding:

'answering "yes" :o)'

Duncan is the new Lib Dem MP for Chippenham in Wiltshire and Jo was elected in 2005 for East Dumbartonshire. Both have been friends of mine for a while. Jo was actually one of the attendees at a Lib Dem Youth and Students 'Activate' training session I helped to organise many years ago.

Will either be tweeting at the wedding itself?

The battlebus Grand National Sweepstake

ITV's Angus Walker has organised a sweepstake of those on the battlebus for tomorrow's Grand National. Horses have been selected at random and Nick Clegg has ended up with My Will. It's got to be in with a chance...

(I've got Vic Venturi and State of Play)

Lib Dem crisps

I don't know if anyone else heard Peter Mandelson being reprimanded on BBC 5 Live yesterday for eating crisps too loudly. Iain Dale was another of the guests at the time. His blog post is here. I thought the whole episode was hugely funny.

I've now got hold of a packet of the Lib Dem version.

I'm not too sure about the photo of Nick. If only they'd asked...

What does David Cameron think about Northern Ireland devolution?

Let's turn to Sky News to find out...



Does my hair look alright?

Cornish Guardian Expose on Twitter Gang

Today's Cornish Guardian has a light-hearted article about a number of Cornwall Councillors from all parties (myself included) who use Twitter. (The printed version is a bit less pejorative than the online version).

For anyone who doesn't do Twitter, don't worry, it's hardly the end of the world if you're not using it. But I feel it is a useful way of communicating everything happening around you. This can descend to the incredibly banal - what you're eating for breakfast and so on. But it can also be much more interesting and useful. During the recent Iranian democracy protests much of the reporting that made it onto western news came from Twitter accounts.

In the case of the allowances debate, the combined tweeting gave a good flavour of the entire debate, setting out what each party and major speaker was saying. It was a debate that had interested a large number of the commentators across the county and this sort of instant reportage could be said to help them follow the debate and the arguments.

I try to use it to keep followers up to date about my council work, rugby and other things I think might be of interest. It's not council funded (it's free) and so I feel no compulsion to keep things too serious.

As I've blogged before, Twitter has helped me during a meeting to get an answer on a serious question that a colleague had but could not be present to ask himself. But the article makes it appear as though all the conversations are utterly infantile. I can't pretend that every tweet I've ever made was completely serious, but I try to keep things a bit more factual and I make sure I'm not distracted from following the debate properly. I note that the Guardian has chosen not to re-print any of my tweets from a council meeting. I suspect because they tended to be more serious than some.

One impact of the article has been that I have picked up a number of new Twitter followers, including the local Conservative Agent. If you would like to join them the follow @alexfolkes.

To read the view of two other councillors who twitter, read Andrew Wallis (Ind) and Steve Double (Con).

UPDATE: I've just talked to the Western Morning News who are following up the Guardian story.

Off to Iceland?

I'm wondering whether Cornwall councillors should be making a trip to Iceland to campaign in their forthcoming referendum?

As I understand it, the Council still has not had all of the money back that was invested by the former County Council and by Restormel in the failed Iceland banks. Yesterday, the Icelandic President vetoed a law that would have seen the money repaid. The Icelandic constitution is such that if a President uses his veto then the latter goes to a referendum.

File under... tongue in cheek

Children in Need

Last Friday was Children in Need day and Cornwall Council held a 'Cornwall's Got Talent' event with staffand members performing in front of a packed Council chamber.

I was invited to be one of the judges alongside Council Leader Alec Robertson and Chairman Pat Harvey. Entering into the spirit of things, we were asked to play the role of three of the Britain's Got Talent judges. So Alec became Simon Cowell, Pat was Sharon Osbourne and I, for my sins, was Louis Walsh.

To play the role properly took moments of serious research (I googled 'Louis Walsh catchphrases'). And so every comment started with 'Hey...' and I used up my stock of 'you owned the stage', 'emotional rollercoaster', 'best singer of the night' and ' I didn't like it, I loved it' by the end of the third act. So, just as Louis does, I repeated them all.

The acts themselves were an eclectic mixture. We started off with staff from Democratic Services doing a sort of Riverdance and Stavros Flatly thing with the 'help' of four councillors. You can find the results on Jeremy Rowe's facebook account.

After that we had a band, a couple of soloists, a saxophone duo and the MC - County Solicitor Richard Williams - miming to Duran Duran (I guess you had to be there).

It was a great way to spend a lunch hour and I hope we raised a decent amount of money for a great cause.

And shall Trelawney live (at Council meetings)?

An interesting rumour reaches me that there are moves afoot to sing Trelawney at the start of Full Council meetings...

I'm not sure that the public are ready to hear my singing voice, but I'll gladly take part if it happens.

Dave Cameron - man of the people (with a £92 bin)

Perhaps David Cameron will come to regret doing his interview with Andrew Marr from his own home. I know that he has taken the decision to open up his home and his family to the media (something Nick Clegg has refused to do) and that is fair enough if you are prepared to cross that threshold.

But the BBC staff apparently took agin what they perceived as high-handedness (surely another example of BBC bias).

And then the line went down three times during the course of the piece.

And now the Guardian has published a 'How to live like Cameron' piece identifying all his fixtures and fittings and how much they cost. What got me was that they reckon the bin in his kitchen cost £92.

I'm sorry, but who spends almost a hundred pounds on a bin?

And then they trashed his bookshelves reckoning that many of the books were ones he had never read and only had there for show.

Political Haircuts

Watching Gordon Brown on BBC News just now I notice that he has had a trim.

Meanwhile, Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg has had a fairly drastic haircut. Gone is the Hugh Grant floppy look and in has come a much shorter style.

Dare I say, it makes him look older and more serious?

Over to you Dave...

Stephen and Julia get married (and a bit of Lembit dancing)

I was lucky enough to be in Plymouth on Saturday for the wedding of Stephen Kearney, the Lib Dem candidate in Henley, and Julia Ohlsen. Best man was the irrepressible Lembit Opik.

Despite what I said in an earlier post, it was fine and sunny for the important part of the day and there was a fantastic setting for the reception at the Mount Batten Sailing Centre. Stephen and Julia now divide their time between their home in Henley and their boat in Plymouth and couldn't have picked a nicer setting (ok - it was also a lot easier for me to get to than Henley, so I liked it for that reason too).

There was a great band playing in the courtyard after the meal and both Stephen and Lembit took a turn performing. The dancing, however, was little... enthusiastic.

Anyway, enjoy some photos of the events.

Balls is Labour's best Leader

I've always had a lot of respect for Ed Balls. I think that the way he has established himself in the schools portfolio has been commanding, not allowing David Laws the sniff of a chance to embarrass the Government's bold reform plans.

In particular, I would single out his fantastic leadership over the SATS marking issue. I think that this has firmly marked him out as the best possible replacement for the PM if he is forced out of office...

OK, ok. I'll stop pretending. It's just that with Ed Balls in charge of Labour, they would fall behind the Lib Dems in the polls according to the Telegraph.

Can David Davis actually read?

Well of course he can, but I was moved to ask because he clearly can't follow a simple instruction from his party leader (and I'm not talking about 'Do not resign your seat and fight an ego-centric by-election').

Today, the Conservatives have published a list of the expenses claimed by their frontbenchers for the three month period just before Davis resigned. His expenses are therefore listed. One of the categories included was a tick box on whether any staff are family members. If so, the MP is asked to give their salary to within a 10k band (from this we learned that many Tory front benchers pay their wives up to 40k per year).

David Davis employs his wife Doreen and so he correctly ticked the family member box. However, in the box for her salary, he has written N/A (for not applicable).

Yes, it is a very petty thought. But this sort of cock up routinely costs ordinary people £100 fine from the revenue department. I am surprised, given the prominence given to this issue by the Tories (oppo day debate and everything) that they couldn't make sure their document was right before they launched it.

Dave's morality tests - back to basics or cones hotline?

David Cameron made a speech in Glasgow yesterday which is written up in the Times as being a call for people to take more responsibility for their lives and to stop thinking opf themselves as victims.

I suspect that much of what he says is fair enough. But the question for me is how this effort will be judged a month or so from now. I tend to think of two of John Major's efforts as being the benchmarks in these matters. On the one hand, you have the cones hotline - a silly little idea that got blown up out of all proportion because there simply weren't any other ideas around at the time. On the other hand, there was back to basics, a fairly serious idea which got twisted by the media who used it to run sleaze stories about every Tory MP they could.

One section of Cameron's speech that amused me was this:

We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people’s feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgemental, we have failed to say what needs to be said.

Try saying that in a William Hague accent. Is Cameron coming over all Yorkshire - 'I call a spade a spade'?

But what about Cameron's own past? He has famously refused to answer questions about his life before he entered politics and, specifically, about rumours that he used cocaine. How does that square with his demand for moral authority? In the light of his new 'tell it like it is' conversion, will he tell us what happened and condemn his own past behaviour?

And I can bet that his meetings with fellow MPs will be fun:

'Oi, Gray, how dare you dump your wife when she had cancer and run off with your secretary. That's disgraceful behaviour and has no part in a morally absolute Tory Party.'

'Look Wintertons, your shenanigans with the allowances system, whilst technically within the rules, bring shame upon us all. I am asking the Queen to strip you of your knighthood.'

'Osborne, that tie is horrible. Take it off.'

How to bore a five year old

Shakespeare has both great stories and fantastic writing. And if you see some of the best actors performing it, either on the stage or film, then it is truly magical.*

I was lucky enough to have a superb English teacher for O level called Watson Weeks who was also a Shakespearean actor. He brought the plays alive for me as never before. I also had a number of truly dreadful English teachers who bored me rigid and almost killed off any liking for literature and drama.

That's why I'm hugely sceptical about the Government plans for teaching original language Shakespeare for children as young as five. As the person from the English teachers association says:

"It's all down to the approach. You can bore people of any age with the wrong approach and you can enthuse people of any age with the correct one."

So hooray for the one in five kids (at most) who have a great English teacher.

* note - does not include Keanu Reeves

Not the approved canvassing technique

Ever noticed how houses with doorbells that play tunes (rather than just go ding-dong) have a much higher tendency to be Liberal Democrats.

Just a thought

Shhh - Nobody tell Lembit

See here

Announcing the Iain Dale Crewe sweepstakes

The Tory cheer-meister has started his usual by-election tactic of running rubbishing stories about the Conservatives' main opponents. You can read it here - if you must.

Readers will remember just how much he followed the party line during the Ealing by-election (only to get egg all over his face when the Tories came a humiliating third).

So I thought I would hold a little competition. Between now and polling day (22nd May, for anyone who doesn't know) just how many times will Iain run stories on the Crewe by-election which are blatantly pro-Tory or anti-Labour (or both). To qualify, the story must mention the Crewe by-election or one of its candidates and it must be overtly partisan. Double points are awarded for copying central office press releases word for word or for spreading a rumour which is just not true.

So there you go. For the fun of it. How many such stories will Iain run? Closing date for entries is a week today.