Evan's Thoughts

Paul Staines (who sometimes prefers to be known as Guido Fawkes) was on Newsnight last night having a spat with Tim Yeo MP - you can watch the argument here.



I'll let you be the judge of who got the better of the argument on Newsnight, and leave time to tell us whether the criticisms of Tim Yeo are either fair or just.

2 days ago, I pointed to Liberal Conspiracy and said that I thought that their source for a particular story was less than reliable - see here.

For bloggers and blogging, the problem with all of this is that if any of us get it wrong, then people will start to dismiss us in the way that they did before blogging entered into the mainstream. The mass media will be very keen to dismiss the blogging world as filled with cranks (which it undoubtedly is) and fools that can be ignored entirely.

Today's questions are these - have we passed the highwater mark for the influence of the individual blogger and are we about to enter a time when the only blogs with 'influence' or 'power' are the select few that are fancy and funded? Will the mass media seek to use 'mistakes' even minor ones as an excuse for ignoring the blogs? Finally, how do we ensure that lies told on a blog for perceived political advantage for the blog's favoured candidate do not influence the result (in relation to this, it is interesting to see South Australia's new law)?

(Image from abcnews.go.com)
Last night I received an email - it said that I was the beneficiary of a will and that I was due to receive £10,000,000 from the deceased, but that the details of the deceased were being withheld as this was the second time they had contacted me. I had not received any earlier communication.

Attached to the email was a name, Joo Cawthra, claiming to be from Heir Trustees, South Wales UK and a mobile telephone number +447011152611.

Now I know of no-one who has died who would leave me such a vast sum of money; and those that know me know that I am a barrister and I have some specialist knowledge of wills and estates law in England & Wales. So I was suspicious.

I telephoned the number and, suprisingly, it rang through. Listening to the person on the other end of the telephone, my suspicions were confirmed. They had no real knowledge of the probate system in England & Wales and so I told the person that this was, I thought, an attempt at fraud and that I would report it. They rang off.

I have contacted Serious Organised Crime Agency (www.soca.gov.uk), who tell me that because I wasn't taken it, it was not something that they would deal with. The man was very helpful and gave me the telephone number for Consumer Direct (www.consumerdirect.gov.uk). I have reported the matter to them ...

These sorts of scams prey on the innocent and the desparate and it is time that we started to increase people's awareness of them.

Those who have read Will Straw's blog today will have seen a report about a drinks party that took place yesterday evening - what they will have picked up from the comments to his blog entry is that Mr Straw's 'source' is less than reliable.

What happened was that Samuel Coates invited a largish group of Conservative and conservative-minded bloggers to a drink at the City Inn in Westminster. The famous and not-so-famous came and it was a chance to chat with other bloggers and also to some of the press officers of the Conservative Party who came too, as well as to some of the people from CCHQ who were thinking through an 'on-line strategy' for the coming general election.

Eric Pickles was on good form - he joked about his twitter reported doughnut-eating session and the fact that his 'form' was down to pies not doughnuts, going on to explain that the Australian newspapers picked up the story and run with it! Seriously, he explained that the coming election is not going to be 'nice' or 'pretty' with our opponents distorting our policies and views online and that we should be prepared to rebut these distortions - and that, it seems to me, is sensible.

What struck me about the people that I chatted to during the evening is just how difficult it will be to try to tie people to a 'party line' - the candidates have a party line to follow, and I would expect them to do so - for the rest, I think that many will be critical of the things that they disagree with, and that is going to be interesting when it comes to the election itself.

The gloves are off, Gordon Brown has decided to do anything that he thinks might limit the scale of the defeat that he fears will come in a few weeks time. Labour follows his lead ...

According to Guido Fawkes, Alastair Darling is not above a little fibbing ...



And now it is reported that Gordon Brown wants Parliament to vote on whether to change the voting system - see here.

Of course, what you will notice about the BBC report is not that this is being done for narrow partisan reasons, no, this is being done 'to restore trust'; and that raises very real concerns about the credulity of the BBC. Sadly, the reality is that Gordon Brown is looking for one of his famous 'dividing lines' ... he wants to lay a trap for the Conservatives - hoping that they will vote against and so be able to be portrayed as dinosaurs who favour the system that 'led to the expenses scandal'.

What he forgets is that the expenses scandal lies in changes to the expenses system brought in after 1997 - talking to MPs who were in Parliament before then, there was no 'John Lewis list', there were no expenses for furnishing houses in extravagent fashion and there were no expenses for Sky Sport.

That this proposal comes out in a Government amendment to a bill that is already in its Committee stage before the Commons shows just how disgracefully Labour is prepared to behave ... what about those discussions in advance with interested parties?

Actually, I don't believe that the Conservatives need fear this proposal one bit - although no-one has yet told me why someone's second preference should trump another's first in a way that convinces me that AV is any better than FPTP.

Well, what is sauce for the goose and all that ...

I know what I think - and my views appear to be confirmed by this news report in the Times and this academic report from the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change.

The academic study makes uncomfortable reading for the Conservatives as well as Labour, in particular criticising Margaret Thatcher's emphasis on supply side reforms as well as the activities of Labour over the last 12 years. The difficulties that Margaret Thatcher faced are very different to the ones we face today - but the identification of the problems is very often the beginning of the process that enables answers to be found - even if we disagree about the relative benefits of different prescriptions that are promoted.

The boasts of Labour ministers and MPs about the number of jobs created now appear so hollow when you consider the sustainability of many of these jobs. Like much of Labour's other rhetoric about the economy, their boasts appear to be so misplaced as to be thoroughly disreputable.

When one considers that our priority should be to increase the size of the wealth generating sector and increasing sustainable jobs, I wonder just how difficult is the next economic period going to be?